The Tin Drum

When Anna reveals her pregnancy, her brother Vinzent takes her and Joseph to be married by a priest. Once they are married, Anna gives birth. She names the baby girl Agnes. Joseph adopts a new name and identity so that he can find a job and escape his past as an arsonist “several times over” (17). Though he is largely reformed, his false identity as Joseph Wranka only lasts a few years. When his old boss “positively identifie[s]” (21) him in 1913, the police place him “under investigation” (22).

When they try to arrest him, Joseph runs away again. He hides under a raft and goes missing from Eastern Europe. No one ever finds Joseph's body, so he is presumed dead, though Oskar mentions several reports of his fate, the most “preposterous” (23) of which hinted that Joseph may have been spotted in New York State in the aftermath of World War I. These reports suggest that Joseph changed his name and became very rich, though also very “lonely” (24). In Oskar's honest opinion, his grandfather died under the raft.

Oskar summons his memories by tapping on a “simple tin drum” (25). Recently, he has been visited by his friends Klepp and Vittlar. Though Oskar is friendly with them, their presence seems to annoy him. Vittlar jokes about Joseph's story, saying Oskar should leave the psychiatric hospital and find his “filthy-rich but weary grandfather” (26). Once the friends leave, Oskar asks Bruno to air out his room. He begins drumming again and returns to the memories of his family's past. After Joseph disappears, the police question his brother, Gregor. Anna marries Gregor and they run a small shop together until Gregor dies from an illness in 1917. After his death, the shop makes more money because Gregor, who had alcoholism, “drank everything away instead” (27). Oskar describes his mother's cousin, Jan Bronski.

Jan is a thin man with large blue eyes who moves into Anna's house after Gregor's death. Agnes falls in love with Jan, who is perpetually on the verge of being drafted into the German army to fight in World War I. Due to his “poor physical condition” (28), however, he is considered exempt. During the war, Agnes works as a nurse. She treats a wounded German soldier named Alfred Matzerath, and they begin to fall in love. Alfred becomes a permanent fixture in Agnes's life, prompting a heartbroken Jan to move out.

After World War I ends, Alfred works as a salesman in Danzig, the city where Anna and Agnes live. Following the war, the German city of Danzig is given to Poland (and later renamed Gdansk). Jan works for the Polish Post Office, a move which is tantamount to denouncing his Kashubian heritage and becoming fully Polish. When Agnes agrees to marry Alfred, Jan becomes engaged to a “big-boned, lanky” (29) woman named Hedwig.

Alfred and Agnes marry, with Jan as their witness. Together with Hedwig, they seem to form a close group of friends. Agnes and Alfred run a grocery store and lead a successful middle-class life. They have a son, Oskar. When Oskar is born, he has the mental capabilities of an adult, though he is trapped inside a baby's body. He is fascinated by the sound of a moth beating against a light bulb, but he overhears his father talking about how he will “take over the business someday” (31). Oskar does not want to work in the grocery store and plans to climb back inside his mother. He also hears his mother talk about a tin drum which she will give him when he reaches the age of three. The promise of a tin drum is enough to satisfy him for the moment, even if he believes that his parents will “neither understand nor in the end respect” (32) his protests and decisions.

Oskar consults a photo album to stir up his memories. Combined with the tin drum, the album helps him recall the past. Oskar looks through the pictures and notices the photos of him together with Klepp. They frequented the cinema in the past; Oskar lacked the funds to take a vacation, so movies allowed him to indulge his need for escapism, satiating his “state of depression” (33).

Oskar looks at the pictures that he and Klepp took together in the passport office, but he would rather focus on the picture of his grandfather in his firefighter's uniform. The people in the photographs make Oskar think about the mood of people after World War I. He notes their sadness, especially among the “women of that period” (35). When inspecting a photograph of Agnes, Jan, and Alfred, he breaks down their shapes into raw geometry. They seem like lines and triangles to him. He likens the relationship between the trio to a “triangle of unequal sides” (37), then looks at another picture in which the trio is playing “the game of skat” (38), a three-player card game.

Oskar also has a picture of himself aged eight months. He lies naked on a bear rug and his tin drum is noticeable by its absence. More important, he says, is the photograph from his third birthday. On this day, he finally received his tin drum. Once he has the drum, he seems like a different child. He seems more confident. This was Oskar at his most content and he decided that he would never “grow a finger's breadth from [his] third birthday on” (40).

Aged three, Oskar decides not to grow anymore. He decides to injure himself to provide a “plausible explanation” (41) for his lack of growth and to avoid any awkward medical questions. After he throws himself down the basement stairs, Agnes blames Alfred for leaving the basement door open and he carries “the burden of that guilt” (42) for years. Alfred's friend Greff carries the injured Oskar out of the basement as Agnes slaps her husband, accusing him of murder. She never forgives Alfred for Oskar's near-death. After this point, Oskar stops growing. He plays his drum often to distract him from the adult world. The adults do not appreciate his constant drumming. When they try to take his drum away, Oskar unleashes a high-pitched scream that shatters glass.

Oskar is a solitary child. Other “neighborhood children” (43) tease him about his drum and his high-pitched voice. Whenever a window breaks in the neighborhood, he is blamed. He discovers that he can shatter glass shortly after his third birthday. Oskar is playing his tin drum so much that he punches a hole in it. Alfred tries to take the drum away, angering Oskar. The ensuring scream breaks many glasses. Alfred is shocked and angry. He tries to hit Oskar, prompting more screams and more broken glasses. From this moment on, the adults realize that they cannot use physical coercion against Oskar for fear of his voice. They are helpless against this three-year-old child.

One time, Oskar shatters the lightbulbs in the house. Anna brings a candle into the dark of the “totally inebriated birthday party” (45) and Oskar describes how he sees the adults—Jan, Agnes, and Alfred—having sex. Once the lights come on, the three begin playing cards. Oskar hides under the table. He notices Jan rubbing his foot against Agnes in a sexual manner that Oskar describes as “woolen molestation” (46). In another incident, Oskar's doctor tries to take away the tin drum during a checkup. Oskar's scream shatters all the glass in Doctor Hollatz's office. Hollatz then writes an article about the “glass-slaying vocal phenomenon” (47). Now an adult, Oskar regrets that his voice “can't even budge a toothbrush glass” (48).

Klepp visits Oskar again. Klepp is a committed planner and has detailed itineraries for his entire life. Klepp's presence makes Oskar think about “his first schedule” (49). In kindergarten, he is tied to the other children with a wool harness. He notices his cousin, Stephan Bronski, being punched by another child because he is Polish. In Danzig, ethnic Poles are often treated with prejudice. Stephan and Oskar leave the kindergarten—Stepan due to prejudice and the non-Polish Oskar due to “solidarity” (50).

Oskar's new Polish school is stricter. His new teacher, Fraulein Spollenhauer, demands that he adhere to her specific rules, particularly her “strict” (54) schedule. She does not like Oskar's tin drum. When she tries to whip him for playing the drum, however, Oskar unleashes a “glass-slaying scream” (55). His scream shatters her spectacles, nearly blinding her. The teacher criticizes Oskar, but he gets what he wants as he is sent away from the school. Oskar no longer has to attend school. The only evidence that he went to school at all is a photograph from the day on which he broke the teacher's spectacles. The picture is titled “My First Day at School” (55).

Since he no longer attends school, Oskar's parents are resigned to him being uneducated and ignorant. He does not talk often and communicates mostly with his tin drum—another sign for his parents that he is not intelligent. Oskar searches for other ways to learn his “big and little ABCs” (57). He meets a neighbor named Meyn who has alcoholism, and who is a musician with four cats. Oskar plays music with him but he is not a suitable teacher.

Oskar meets Frau Greff. She is the wife of Alfred's friend, Greff, who is obsessed with the troop of boy scouts, of which he is the leader. Greff does not pay much attention to his wife and Oskar hints that he may have been attracted to the boy scouts. Frau Greff spends most of her days in bed. When Oskar meets her, however, his presence brings energy to her life. She has no children of her own, so she takes pleasure in dressing Oskar up in “baby clothes” (60) that she knits. Oskar plays along with this in exchange for her teaching him to read. Slowly, he becomes literate by stealing her books and smuggling them home. Like Oskar's parents, Frau Greff considers him to be unintelligent. Oskar, however, views himself as a genius as he learns “quickly and steadily” (62).

During one of their afternoons together, Frau Greff reads from a book about Rasputin, the famous Russian mystic and political figure. The book describes Rasputin's sexual exploits in sordid detail and Frau Greff reads it aloud, certain that Oskar is not smart enough to “understand any of this” (62). She is mistaken. Eventually, Frau Greff invites Agnes to read along with her. Their near-pornographic descriptions of Rasputin's life make them laugh. Oskar sits quietly and continues to listen while eating “far too many pastries” (64).

In the hospital, Oskar is visited by a certain female doctor. She believes that he “was too isolated as a child” (65). In Oskar's view, he is treating her just as much as she is treating him. He remembers an incident from his past, when he was forced to drink another boy's urine. He still “can't stand to hear the sound of women urinating in chamber pots” (66).

Agnes and Jan spend every Thursday afternoon together. They leave Oskar at a toy shop owned by a man named Sigismund Markus, who is deeply in love with Agnes. Each week, Agnes buys Oskar a tin drum to replace his worn-out older model and then leaves him with Markus while she goes to have sex with Jan. Oskar suspects that Jan may technically be his father, referring often to Alfred as his “presumptive” father. During one visit to the toy shop. Oskar wanders away. He walks the streets of Danzig and climbs to “the very top of the [Stockturn] tower” (70) with a view over the entire city. When he feels a sudden urge to scream, he shatters the windows in the Stadt-Theater. Oskar is surprised that his powerful voice can shatter glass from so far away. The incident causes panic in the streets. Oskar is pleased, especially when he reads reports of the incident in the newspapers the next day. The newspapers blame “sunspots” (71) for the shattered glass.

Oskar returns to the toy shop, where he finds Markus begging Agnes to leave Jan and go away with him because “it's clear the Poles are finished once the Germans come” (72). Agnes refuses his proposition. She is embarrassed. Though Markus accepts her refusal, he asks her to stop her affair with Jan. He believes that her affair with a Polish man will cause trouble in a city where many Germans are prejudiced against Polish people.