The Tin Drum

Since he is now the chief breadwinner, Oskar decides that he needs a suit. A tailor's widow offers to make him a suit in exchange for funeral supplies for her now-dead husband. Oskar hopes that a good suit will also make his “new, vain self” (306) more attractive to women.

Returning to the hospital where he spent some difficult months, he seeks out Sister Gertrud, a nurse who treated him. He asks her on a date and, eventually, she agrees. They meet that night near a tram stop. On first sight, Oskar is less than impressed that she arrives without “the nurse's uniform [he] so admired” (307). They go to a club and, after some drinks, he asks her to dance. She is reluctant, likely due to Oskar's misshapen body. When they reach the dance floor, however, the crowds part. Oskar is a skilled dancer and the crowd cheers for him. After they return to their table. Gertrud excuses herself and visits the restroom, “blushing furiously” (308). She never returns. Despite his insistence that he does not care, Oskar dwells on the way she treated him.

A short time later, Oskar is working in the graveyard. As he installs a new gravestone, he notices a severed finger in the freshly dug earth. The finger has been “hacked off instead by the motorized digger, which had no feeling” (311). Oskar spots a ring on the finger and the image stays in his mind as he compares himself to a character from Hamlet. He decides that the appearance of a ringed finger is a sign that he should get married. He invites Maria to dinner and, while they are out, he proposes to her. After several days of thinking the offer over, Maria “decline[s] to marry [him]“ (313).

The German economy is on the brink of collapse due to “the currency reform“ (314). Oskar loses his job as a stonecutter. He searches for something else to do, until he is approached by art students who ask him to pose nude as a model at their school. His “all too expressive hump“ (315), as caused by his sudden growth spurt, is very interesting to them.

At the art school, Oskar meets Professor Kuchen. The combination of irregular body shape and bright blue eyes makes Oskar a tantalizing prospect for Kuchen, who heralds Oskar's appearance as analogous to the 20th century. Oskar poses nude for the students, assuring the reader that he is comfortable with the size of his penis which can “match that of any so-called normal man” (318). During this time, Oskar meets a woman named Ulla. Like him, she is a model at the school. She happens to be the girlfriend of the painter and former soldier whom Oskar met in Northern France. Lankes once killed two nuns on a beach in cold blood but now he is an artist with some degree of success. However, he is not a good boyfriend to Ulla—he abuses her.

During one of Oskar's shifts as a model, a student nicknamed Raskolnikov decides something is missing. He calls for someone to fetch a tin drum, without knowing about Oskar's history with these instruments. Oskar reluctantly holds the drum but he refuses to play anything. The painting is titled Madonna 49.

Later, Maria spots a poster advertising an exhibition for the art in which Oskar has posed as a model. The idea of Oskar posing for this “smutty filth” (322) angers her. She attacks him with a ruler. Since she has already found a decently paid job in a deli, she is annoyed at his attempts to earn an extra income. Oskar notes her reaction. He decides that the time is right to find a home of his own.

Oskar finds an apartment. When alone, he realizes that playing on the tin drum is a way to recall moments from his past with great clarity. When he plays, a form of muscle memory kicks in and he is able to associate certain rhythms and patterns with certain times in his life. He describes his search for an apartment. The building in which he now lives belongs to Zeidler, a “short, squat, breathless, and hedgehoggy” (325) man who often becomes angry and smashes his drinking glass. Also living in the house is Sister Dorothea, a nurse who works a strange schedule so Oskar never sees her.

By this time, Oskar has returned to his job as a stonecutter. He is optimistic for the future. When he is alone in his apartment, he begins to think about Dorothea. The more she is absent, the more he develops an idea of her in his mind and gets “all sorts of ideas” (331). He begins to fall in love with this fantasy version of Dorothea. He becomes so obsessed that he starts to read through her mail.

One day, he finds a letter from Dr. Erich Werner. The letter to Dorothea from another man infuriates Oskar and fills him with jealousy. He assumes that Werner is Dorothea's lover, which goes against the entire biography he has written for her in his mind. Oskar briefly decides to become a doctor and “drive Dr. Werner out” (332) but he quickly abandons this ambition.

Oskar cannot stop thinking about Dorothea, though he also spends time refining his talents as a stonecutter. As much as he would like to talk about his job, he always returns to the subject of Dorothea. He gradually obsesses so much that he begins to try to open her door, hoping that she may have forgotten to lock it when leaving. This does not work until one day Oskar tries to open her “frosted-glass door” (334) and finds that it swings open.

Oskar enters and looks around. Her room smells of vinegar. He tries to reassemble his mental image of Dorothea based on the objects inside her home. As he looks through her possessions, he examines her “lingerie and blouses” (336) and then climbs into her wardrobe. Once he is inside, surrounded by her clothes, he feels himself become aroused. Oskar is overwhelmed by the scent of her clothing and he starts to masturbate. However, the sight of a “black patent-leather belt” (337) reminds him of one of the eels he saw inside the horse's head on the beach as a young boy. Oskar finishes masturbating and exits the “neat and clean” (339) wardrobe. He leaves Dorothea's apartment.

After slipping out of Dorothea's room, Oskar wants to go back to his own room. However, he hears a “forced cough” (340) which is an attempt to attract his attention. Oskar ignores the mysterious cougher at first. After he opens an uninteresting letter addressed to Dorothea, he cannot ignore the coughing.

He follows the sound. He walks to the end of the hall and looks inside the last room, where a man is laid out on a dirty bed in a room filled with trash. Oskar examines the “corpulent, lazy yet not immobile” (342) man and wonders whether he has left his bed at all in recent days. The man politely asks Oskar to use his stove to boil water. Oskar does as he is asked. He boils water then brings it to the bed, where the man begins to cook spaghetti. He offers Oskar a portion of the pasta but Oskar turns him down. When the man continues to offer, however, Oskar agrees to eat some spaghetti. He is shocked when the meal is delicious, so much so that he announces that it has “set a culinary standard” (345) against which all future meals will be judged.

While they eat, the man introduces himself as Klepp (the man who visits Oskar in the hospital). He asks about Oskar's life, but Oskar has no idea how to even begin to tell his story. Only by playing on his little tin drum can he tease the memories out of his mind. Oskar plays his drum, which excites Klepp so much that he raises himself up into a sitting position. Klepp grabs a flute from under the bed and plays along with the rhythm of the tin drum. Oskar and Klepp play for “several hours” (346). By the time they are done, Klepp seems revitalized. He leaps from his bed and insists that they both “form a jazz band” (347). That night, they go out drinking together to celebrate their new musical project.

Needing a “second melodic instrument” (348) for their jazz band, Klepp and Oskar search for a guitarist. Zeidler makes a change to the apartment building by installing a “coco runner” (349), a coconut fiber rug. Oskar helps and, by the time they have installed the rug in the hallway, he discovers that there is an extra piece. He offers to cut it off to make the rug fit.

That night, “full of beer and blood sausage” (351), Oskar needs to use the toilet. Rather than dress himself to walk down the hallway to the communal toilet, he wraps himself in the piece of excess rug. He walks to the bathroom in the dark but, once inside, he realizes that someone is already in there. As soon as he hears the surprised reaction of a woman, he knows that Dorothea is in the bathroom with him. However, he still cannot see her as the bathroom is completely dark.

Sister Dorothea reaches out in the dark and accidentally lays her hand on Oskar. She first touches his chest, then the rug wrapped around his waist. She is shocked. She asks for Oskar's name. Standing in front of the woman with whom he is obsessed, Oskar decides to lie. He tells Dorothea that he is “Satan, come to call on Sister Dorothea” (352). When Dorothea collapses, he lays the coconut fiber rug across her. The touch of the carpet has an arousing effect on Dorothea. As she is balanced on the edge of consciousness, she is overwhelmed and pleads with “Satan” to have sex with her. However, he cannot get himself aroused.

Dorothea comes to and realizes that Oskar has been lying to her. She runs past him into the hallway, leaving Oskar alone. Oskar breaks down in tears. Eventually, his weeping is so loud that he wakes up Zeidler and his wife. They come to check on the crying man, just at the moment when Klepp arrives home drunk with the “long-sought guitarist” (354), Scholle. Oskar's friend helps him back to his room.

The following day, Dorothea leaves the apartment building forever. She says nothing to Oskar, who deals with his sadness by going to practice with Klepp and their new guitarist. They name their musical project The Rhine River Three because they practice alongside the River Rhine.

The Rhine River Three secure a gig at a “serious and respectable“ (356) venue called The Onion Cellar. The Onion Cellar is not a traditional nightclub. On entry, every guest is given an onion, a knife, and a chopping board. On the “signal” (358) of the club owner, everyone begins cutting their onions. The slicing of the onions makes everyone cry. Once everyone begins to cry, they can be more emotionally honest with one another. They “let themselves be turned inside out like a coat” (359). The patrons have no compunction with telling one another about the various things in their lives which make them sad. The job of The Rhine River Three is to perform after the group weeping session. Typically, Oskar's group provide a “musical transition” (361) into the rest of the evening.

On one occasion, however, the owner's wife gets everyone's attention during the onion slicing. She begins a “violent eruption” (362) about her awful husband, turning the crowd into a rambunctious and rowdy audience. No matter what Oskar and his bandmates do, they cannot restore the atmosphere. With the crowd on the verge of a riot, Oskar begins to drum. He plays a furious drum solo based on what is “in [his] heart” (364), using his drumming to tell the crowd his entire biography. The crowd is awestruck. They begin to mimic his development, regressing to the status of children as he tells them about his childhood. They are so swept up in the story of Oskar's childhood that some people in the crowd lose control of their bladders.

By the time Oskar finishes his autobiographical drum solo, the owner is livid. He accuses Oskar of turning all his patrons into children and blames Oskar for his urine-soaked floor. When he tries to fire The Rhine River Three, however, the crowds stop turning up. They want The Rhine River Three back. Rather than lose their regular gig, the owner agrees that they can play three nights every week and they will receive twice as much money.

Oskar is making so much money that he needs to open a bank account. After several weeks, Oskar goes on a trip with his bandmates and the bar owner. They spend a day at the river, where the bar owner deserts the others to shoot sparrows on his own. Oskar says that he will make his own way home. He watches as the bar owner crashes his car just as he leaves. The crash kills the bar owner, though the other passengers survive with “minor injuries” (367). Klepp claims that a flock of sparrows rushed at the car and caused the crash. At the club owner's funeral, a man named Dr. Dosch offers Oskar a lucrative recording contract but he declines.

Sensing the need to get away for a while, Oskar tries to organize a vacation. The only person who can agree to come is Lankes. Together, they travel back to the beach in Northern France where they first met. This is “the only choice” (368). They eat lunch near the beach and, after a meal of cod, they reunite with Lieutenant Herzog, who obsessively inspects the pillbox bunkers even after the war. Lankes punches Herzog in the face. Oskar remembers Lankes killing the nuns on Herzog's orders.

Then, the men spot two nuns walking by. The two nuns are in exactly the same spot where Lankes shot the two nuns during World War II. Lankes invites one of the nuns to join him inside the concrete gun station that is still present on the beach. Despite her reluctance, she agrees. They emerge a short time later, having evidently had sex inside the bunker. The nun hurries away, unable to look Oskar in the eye, but Lankes insists that she has “nothing to be unhappy about” (374). Later, Oskar sees the same nun walking fully-clothed into the ocean. He is unsure whether she is trying to swim or die by suicide.

The incident prompts Oskar to criticize Lankes for the way he abuses women. Lankes dismisses his concerns, insisting that there is nothing wrong with consensual sex. Both men choose to ignore the nun walking into the ocean. Lankes changes the subject, wondering whether the nuns on the beach might be a good subject for a painting. When they return home, he paints “every one” (376) of his imagined paintings and becomes very famous. His success prompts Oskar to contact Dosch.

Oskar returns to Dusseldorf. There, Klepp is displeased with the way Oskar plays the tin drum. He has a very traditional idea about how jazz should be played, one which Oskar's drumming does not match. They drift apart and Oskar eventually leaves The Rhine River Three.

Needing a new source of income, he accepts an offer from Dr. Dosch, who wants him to play a series of solo shows across the continent. When he meets with Dosch, however, he discovers that the real organizer of the tour is his “friend and master” (378), Bebra, now very old and using a wheelchair. Oskar is shocked to see Bebra again. However, Bebra launches into a tirade, listing all the guilty moments from Oskar's life. Bebra has a deep, thorough knowledge of Oskar's darkest secrets. He knows Oskar feels guilty for betraying his uncle and murdering his father. Oskar has an emotional reaction. He confesses to his sins and breaks down in tears. Once he has confessed, Bebra consoles him. Oskar signs a contract and they arrange the tour.

Oskar goes on tour and makes albums on which he plays the tin drum. His music is a “gold mine” (380) after he is sent on tour after tour. He becomes rich and famous, but he refuses to move house as he does not want to abandon Klepp. However, he makes so much that he is able to buy a deli for Maria. While Oskar is on his seventh or eighth tour, he is told that Bebra is dead. Oskar risks lawsuits by cancelling his upcoming dates, claiming that he needs time to mourn.

Oskar spends this grieving period wandering through the streets, renting a “powerful, gleaming, and slightly overweight” (382) dog so that he does not feel too lonely. He walks a rented dog named Lux past a field of wheat. Lux runs away into the fields, then comes back with a “tastefully ringed woman's finger” (383) in his mouth. Oskar takes the ring-bearing finger and places it inside a handkerchief. As he heads home with “various plans for [his] find” (384), Vittlar calls out to him.

The person calling Oskar's name is a “tall, willowy, vibrant, collapsible” (385) man sat in a tree some distance away. His quizzes Oskar about the item found in the field. The man's name is Gottfried von Vittlar, the man who frequently visits Oskar in the hospital and who will eventually provide testimony against Oskar in a court.

Vittlar's testimony functions as the description of the ensuing days. Oskar agrees to spend time with Vittlar, who recognizes Oskar as the famous drummer. Oskar gives the ring from the finger to Vittlar, pays for their tram rides back to the city, where he returns Lux to the “dog-rental agency” (388), then has a plaster cast made of the finger. Then, the new friends eat dinner together.

After they have been friends for some time, Oskar invites Vittlar to his house. With his extra money, he now rents the room which once belonged to Dorothea and pays Klepp's rent. He keeps the severed finger in a jar “floating in alcohol” (389), admitting to Vittlar that occasionally he says a prayer to the finger. According to rumors, Oskar says, Dorothea was murdered. He believes that the finger may have belonged to Dorothea and Vittlar notes Oskar's “devotion” (390) to the finger. Vittlar also meets Oskar's surviving friends and family.

Oskar and Vittlar cruise around the city on a borrowed tram car. A group of men tries to flag them down for a ride. Oskar can tell that two of the men are holding the third man hostage. The prisoner is also blind. Oskar asks the two men why they are holding the third prisoner. They admit to being German soldiers who stormed the Polish Post Office in 1939; the prisoner was a man who escaped from the slaughter and they have a “document issued in thirty-nine ordering his death by firing squad” (392). Oskar remembers the prisoner's face. He pleads for the man's life, claiming that the war finished a long time ago. The soldiers refuse. They insist that debts must be repaid.

Oskar and Vittlar follow as they drag the blind man through the streets. As they prepare to execute the man, Oskar plays his tin drum. His drumming somehow summons a squadron of Polish cavalry soldiers. The “stamping horsemen” (393) grab the two soldiers and their prisoner, then disappear.

When they are gone, Vittlar praises Oskar for his quick thinking. Vittlar admits that he wishes he could do something that would make him famous like Oskar. This admission inspires Oskar. He tells Vittlar to go to the police and show them the “jar with the ring finger” (394). Though Vittlar is reluctant, Oskar convinces him to do it. Oskar is sick of life and would prefer to be in prison or in a hospital. Vittlar goes to the police station while Oskar takes a nap in a field. When he wakes up, he decides to run so that Vittlar's story is more credible.

Oskar goes on the run “to enhance the value of Vittlar's accusation” (396). He takes a train to France, sitting in first class. However, he is arrested as soon as he steps off the train: Agents from Interpol are already waiting for him.

Oskar is arrested and convicted of Dorothea's murder. The court decides that he is not sane, so they send him to the hospital. Oskar reveals that he is about to turn 30. In recent times, a new suspect has been named in the murder case. Oskar may be acquitted, much to his annoyance. He does not want to return to the normal world as all his needs are catered to in the hospital.

However, he admits that he has recently felt as though he should perhaps do more with his life. He describes the precise way in which the “Interpol agents” (398) chased him through Paris and arrested him. In the moments before his arrest, he suffered from an existential crisis, which he dismisses now as “elevator notions” (400). Oskar compares himself to Jesus Christ, describing how Jesus surrounded himself with disciples at the age of 30. Oskar has gathered as much from Vittlar, though he struggles to match Vittlar's conviction. He is not thrilled by anything life has to offer and is not pleased about what he will do after “his inevitable discharge from the mental institution” (402).

Oskar speculates about the nature of death, which he refers to as the Black Cook. Death has been an ever-present feature in Oskar's life, whether that is the death of his mother, uncle, mentor, or neighbor. They all led very different lives but ultimately suffered from the same fate. Now, Oskar's only response to death seems to be to laugh, just like the final lines of his morbid nursery rhyme. Oskar recites the rhyme about how “the Black Cook's coming” (403), laughing in his cell in the hospital.