500 Grass, Gunter
Heart; he later introduces himself to the Dusters as
Jesus and becomes their leader. When the Dusters
break into the church, Oskar has the Jesus figure
removed and takes its place while mass is read. Later,
the painter Raskolnikov will depict Oskar as Jesus.
In his alleged sexual encounter with Sister Doro-
thea, however, Oskar claims to be Satan.
Questions of identity are important also for
a number of minor characters. Oskar’s maternal
grandfather, Joe Koljaiczek, assumes the identity
of Joe Wranka in order to escape the authorities.
Haunted by his memories of Lucy Rennwand,
Oskar believes he recognizes her in the person of
Regina Raeck, a fellow refugee from Danzig. He
continues to confuse their identities throughout
the trip. He also confuses Leo Schugger and Wil-
lem Slobber, believing them to be the same person.
Oskar’s neighbor, Mr. Münzer, calls himself Klepp
because, like Oskar, he does not want to take his
father’s last name. Oskar’s landlord exhibits a split
personality, violently breaking liquor glasses and
then carefully sweeping up the shards. In one pas-
sage, Oskar refers to these sides of his landlord’s
personality with two different names: Oskar uses
the nickname Hedgehog to refer to the landlord’s
violent personality and his real name, Zeidler, to
refer to his more orderly side.
The theme of identity is also significant on a
larger, national scale. As many commentators have
noted, Oskar can be seen as an embodiment of the
German nation. At one point Oskar notes that the
two poles of his identity, represented by Goethe
and Rasputin, always exist in tandem. This idea can
also be applied to Germany, a nation that spawned
numerous intellectuals and artists, but also Hitler
and the Nazis. With its complicated main character
and its depiction of how ordinary citizens support
the rise of National Socialism, Grass’s The Tin Drum
insists that polar opposites such as good and evil or
rational and irrational cannot be easily separated.
Instead, the potential for both enlightenment and
brutality coexist in unsettling ways.
Christina Kraenzle
violence in The Tin Drum
Throughout his life, Oskar witnesses countless acts
of violence and brutality. Oskar encounters many
violent individuals, and also observes the organized
violence of the Nazi regime and the war. Grass’s
novel thus connects the personal and the political,
showing how ordinary citizens commit acts of bru-
tality, both in the private and public sphere.
As a child, Oskar is subjected to the cruelty of
the neighborhood children who force him to eat a
noxious soup made with live frogs, saliva, and urine.
At his kindergarten, Stephan Bronski is viciously
beaten by a boy named Lothar who refers to Stephan
as “Polack,” thus alluding to the Polish-German ten-
sions leading up to the war. After the war, Oskar
encounters Zeidler, the rooming house landlord who
flies into violent and seemingly unprovoked rages
and shatters liquor glasses to vent his anger.
Oskar also recounts how Meyn, irritated by the
smell from his four tomcats, brutally attacks the
animals with a fire poker and stuffs them, mortally
wounded but still alive, into a garbage can. Meyn
is later expelled from the SA for inhumane cruelty
to animals, despite his involvement, Oskar says,
in the events of Kristallnacht. Oskar then goes on
to describe, in the final chapter of Book One, the
Kristallnacht—known in English as Crystal Night or
The Night of Broken Glass—the organized and sys-
tematic terrorizing of Jews that occurred throughout
Germany and parts of Austria on November 9 and
10, 1938. Oskar recounts how his father, Alfred
Matzerath, watches the events with approval, how
men in uniform and civilian clothes participate in
the destruction, and how firemen look on while the
local synagogue burns. Oskar further describes how
businesses, including Sigismund Markus’s toyshop,
are vandalized, and recounts how Markus commits
suicide before SA officers descend on his store.
Oskar’s comment that Meyn is condemned for the
violence against the cats, but celebrated for his par-
ticipation in the violence against the Jewish popula-
tion, illustrates the extent to which Nazis devalued
and dehumanized the Jewish people. The participa-
tion of ordinary citizens in the events of Kristall-
nacht also show how anti-Semitic Nazi violence was
condoned and even, in many cases, supported.
As Oskar notes early in the novel, “where there
is politics, there is violence.” As political tensions
turn to war, Oskar witnesses countless acts of bru-
tality. He is present during the bloody battle at the