Read selections from Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman by George Steiner. New York: Atheneum, 1986.
In this book, Steiner analyzes the role that language played in the atrocities of WWII. He recounts the pressures that totalitarian regimes place on communication, claiming that “the German language was not innocent of the horrors of Nazism” (99). In your first journal entry, analyze how Grass subverts language and imagery in order to make a commentary on Nazi abuses of the German language. Of course, not many of us know German, so we can’t discuss the intricacies of Grass’s word usage. But, you can address Grass’s parody of the conventions of the novel (e.g. chronology, psychological characterization, coherence). You also need to think about how Grass’s novel reinforces his view of the world.
I want to note that I have no expectations regarding your journal entries. I want you to read the critical articles or excerpts, find an idea that interests you, and apply this idea to the text. Your comments should be based on The Tin Drum. Write about a page or 200-250 words and then post to blogspot. Please try to read the entries of the other students in class before Thursday. You can post a comment on their entries, if you wish.
I think that Grass uses Oskar to possibly portray how annoyed he was by the mediocrity as well as the disrespectful nature of his society post WWI. He did not appreciate the prospect of performing seemingly meaningless tasks as a salesperson or someone in a similar profession, and he wanted people to remember the atrocities and sense of loss caused by WWI. By using this zany character that is able to comically disrupt his society through antics with his drum and voice, he advocates the notion that humanity will show its true colors if given the opportunity to show them. And, audiences will find that those qualities can be quite negative.
ReplyDeleteThe drum for Oskar is an extension of himself as he uses it to convey how he feels or what he wants, and causes events to change based on different rhythms (such as in The Rostrum chapter). The drum is the only source of solace for him as well, as he constantly desires to return back to his mother's womb. From the beginning, it is made clear that Oskar has some sort of mental disorder (s), which gives audiences a reason to not give him credit for all of the information he provides, as it might be exaggerated or actually entirely false. Although, that could be a trick of the author's, as he possibly wants us to wonder about the credibility of Oskar's claims about his background and therefore creates confusion in order for us to be somewhat in the dark at all times. Regardless, it is captivating.
I feel that throughout the novel, Grass subverts language and imagery in the same ways that Steiner outlines in his essay. Nazi Germany was notorious for their cataloging of voice; both written and verbal. This led to a Germany that used its language as a means in which to push their regime and create a tension between what is truth and falsehood within the country. What Grass does through Oskar is create an alternate Germany; one that is void of language, thus, unable to be infected by the Nazis. The drum symbolizes both coherence and chaos. Oskar seems to understand what he is saying with his drum, using it as an instrument not only for musical oration but also as a way for him to understand a deteriorating country. The drum could also represent Nazism as well, used also as a tool that distinguishes the difference between "the" language and "their" language. I found it both brilliant and ironic that for a main character who has such little to actually "say" Grass is able to recreate such a realistically tattered landscape. It is in this way that Grass, through means that are borderline visceral and revolutionary, is able to create a past that correlates with a realness and understanding of the brutality of the Nazi regime.
ReplyDeleteSteiner discusses how the WWII atrocities slowly infiltrated the German language. He describes how “words were committed to saying things no human mouth should ever have said and no paper made by man should ever have been inscribed with (99).” Over a twelve year period, the German language used once beautiful words to describe horrific events. Grass seems to reflect the Nazi’s infiltration of the language in his novel The Tin Drum. On page 203, Grass’s character Oskar plays with words from the Bible—specifically the Corinthians chapter devoted to love. In this section, Oskar equates Santa Clause with the gasman and people who say ‘I love you’ to radishes. Grass is demonstrating how much the German language has been demoralized because Oskar gives radishes the meaning of love and the gasman becomes the symbol of faith that Santa Clause once embodied. Steiner says that “something of the lies and sadism will settle in the marrow of the language…the language will no longer grow and freshen (101).” Grass attempts to rebuild strength of his German language by giving Oskar the ability to play around with words. The only word Grass seems to believe has not been affected by Nazi party is hope. Through Oskar, Grass states that “as long as man hopes, he will go on turning out hopeful finales (204).” Hope is the only power the German language had to recovery from the terrible things it witnessed during the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteIn Grass’ novel, the use of language correlates with the use of the language outlined in the essay Steiner because he does show the German language and uses it in what could be seen by many artists and scholars as a very harsh language, one that has gained a lot of negativity due to the Nazi regime. The Nazi’s used propaganda more than anything to gain people for their movement, and in using this propaganda, they used language, spoken and written, to influence the German people to join the Nazi party. language was a very strong influence when it came to the Nazi party, because they were being told the things that they believe, and brainwashed throughout the process due to the use of Language. With Oskar though, this strong influence of language seems to blur, and he shows the reader that there are instances where the harsh aspects of the language is void. Since the language is void, the Nazi’s cannot taint the ideals that Oskar hold, and he clings to the one thing he has to signify his freedom, which is his drum. The Nazi’s seemed to have ruined the German language for Steiner, and he points this out. “For let us keep one fact clearly in mind: the German language was not innocent of the horrors of Nazism.” Since Oskar has his drum, his one safe haven, the world doesn’t seem so terrifying so he isn’t so affected by the language, but he still sees that it has an impact on the Nazi party and how they ran the extermination methods and overall glorifying of the Aryan race.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading George Steiner's article concerning language and Nazi Germany, a particular passage from Grass's "The Tin Drum" came to mind. In chapter 16, "Faith, Hope, Love", Oskar recounts some of the events of Kristallnacht, and the language here certainly escapes the true horror of the situation. Oskar describes how "Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth (201)", and that after being set on fire, the mound of flaming objects provided his father, the grocer, "an opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze (201)." As Steiner puts it, the German language was "being used to run hell, getting the habits of hell into its syntax (100)." I therefore chose the passage about Kristallnacht because Oskar describes it using such simple and inoffensive language. Furthermore in this chapter, Oskar describes how he saw the SA joking and playing around with toys inside one of the shops, and depicts an SA man who was "cutting dolls open and seemed disappointed each time that nothing but sawdust flowed from their limbs and bodies (202)". The destruction of the doll, an innocent child's toy, is perhaps an uncomfortable image which could offer a parallel to the desensitization of the SA, and ultimately the German people.
ReplyDeleteThe Nazis used the language to enforce innumerable falsehoods, to persuade the German people that the war was just and everywhere victorious. Propaganda was perpetuated to further the Nazi ideas and convince the people they were on the right side of triumph. It was an age of deception. Over time, words lost their original meanings and acquired “nightmarish definitions” as Steiner states (100).
ReplyDeleteThe Tin Drum perpetuates this idea of deception. Throughout the novel, it isn’t clear what is real and what is not, what is truth and what is a lie. Does Oskar really have the power to refuse to grow and shatter glass with his voice or are these exaggerated metaphors for the times in which he was living? Because Oskar is recanting the story of his life from an insane asylum, Grass is able to play with irony and creates an unreliable narrator. Grass’ combination of fact and fiction also helps to blend the line.
Grass cannot let the event that has shaped his culture and his entire life simply disappear and be swept under the rug. In a way, it appears as if he himself is playing on the reader’s mind, subjecting them to the same deception and urges them to never forget what it is like to be unable to decipher fact from fiction.
In connection to Steiner’s text, a particular section of The Tin Drum stands out. Oskar speaks of the German people expecting Santa Clause, but instead welcoming the Gasman. But what is wrong with the gasman, Oskar inquires. People do need to cook, after all. Steiner points out the new meaning of words such as “gas oven”, which Grass highlighted in his writing – before the Nazi atrocities, a gas oven was simply a convenient tool to heat a meal. But afterward, especially within the German culture, it gained a whole another meaning, one of pain, horrific crimes against basic human sensibilities, and terrible implications about Germany itself. In The Tin Drum, the gasman is a murderer, a trickster who promises prosperity but instead corrupts an entire nation while they passively look on.
ReplyDeleteBut Grass’s observation of the bloodstained German language did not lie only within words. The entire structure of The Tin Drum is based on an unreliable narrator, a man who contradicts and changes his story repeatedly. Oskar the child is referred to in third person while Oskar the narrator addresses himself in first person. This symbolizes the way in which Germans distanced themselves from the crimes of the Nazis, as if the old versions of themselves, the conspirators who looked on as their Fuhrer terrorized Europe, were now strangers to them, strangers for whose actions they could no longer be responsible. It is with chilling honesty and carelessness that Oskar admits to betraying his potential father, Jan. He feels guilt, but he needed to save himself and his drums. His feeling summarizes the view Grass holds of the German society. They claim to have done what they had to, as if choice was taken away from them, and they could only try to keep moving on. This separation within their society and Grass’s novel underlines the banality of evil, or the concept that evil deed are not caused by powers beyond our understanding, but committed by ordinary people put into extraordinary situations.
The story so far, up to the point that we have read of The Tin Drum, shows an adventurous schizophrenic from his own perspective. I believe Grass uses Oskar to take language and play with it, re-imagine or find a meaning. And through a reliably unreliable character who sometimes can’t even bring himself to be apart of his own life, slipping into third person and back to first, and at that, having it become a “we” story, Oskar and himself (the little man in the asylum).
ReplyDeleteThe oddities of flipping from one time to the next, not fulling knowing where some places are, but a little to well where are other places. I cannot find most of the places on the map without looking, but Oskar maps places like Homer, knowing where they are at all times, before even his own birth.
I find that his tin drum is a way of speaking. He doesn’t like to speak, and if he does, it destroys glass…artfully though. Oskar’s voices are not only two, but also there is a voice of Satan. This drew a grand paradox with his statement to where he and baby Jesus could be Doppelgängers of one another. And that his mother could be Mother Mary and Jan Bronski looks to be a grownup version of Jesus. Connecting the questionable paternity of Oskar.
Lastly, the thing that got me to wound around is the word use for adult, that it was grownup. Which I find the most apropos word to oppose Oskar’s height.
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ReplyDeleteThe excerpt from Steiner’s book focuses on how the atrocities and actions of the Nazi Regime altered the German language in such a way as to give entirely new connotations to words and phrases that had been spoken for quite some time. Steiner references Klaus Mann when he wrote, “Can it be that Hitler has polluted the language of Nietzsche and Holderlin” (102)? As Steiner states, the answer is a resounding “yes.” Words such as “oven” and “final solution” took on horrible connotations that reflected the inhumane nature of the Nazi’s desire to eradicate the Jewish people. In addition, the implication of propaganda polluted images, turning them into subversive symbols of control, destruction, and death.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Tin Drum,” Gunter Grass is able to reflect the perversion of not only the German language, but also German history and culture through the character of Oskar. Serving as an unreliable narrator, Oskar reflects the Nazi’s tendencies to twist and alter their stories and belief (by way of the power Hitler saw in the German language) in order to make their ideas and goals popular, despite their atrocious nature. This presents an interesting duality within Oskar, because rarely does he ever speak, instead relying on his tin drum to convey his feelings and thoughts. Perhaps Grass saw this as a chance to replace the polluted German language with something pure or unrelated, in this case, music.
As others above me have stated, Oskar’s use of third person could represent the Nazi’s desire to distance and remove themselves from their actions. Oskar is a character in a story, but he is also representative of the millions of lives affected by the actions of the Nazi Regime. His compulsion to remain forever a three-year-old mirrors what could be a semblance of the purity and innocence that was stripped away from the German, Polish and Jewish people by the Nazi’s.
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ReplyDeleteReligion was a major part of the time of Nazism. There was a time when Nazism was in its infancy in the religious thought of the Thule Society, a society based upon ariosophy. Gunter Grass’s hatred toward the Nazis manifests when Oskar states, “Thereupon I ran out in front of the high latar with Satan hopping up and down in me, whispering as he had at my baptism: ‘Oskar, look around. Windows everywhere. All glass, all glass’” (145). It is interesting that Oskar speaks about the manifestation of the Queen of Heaven due to a passage of Jeremiah stating, “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger” (Jeremiah 7:1, King James Version). This makes me wonder how much occultism the author dealt with. In fact, I believe that he never understood the full implication of the eisegetical roots of Theosophy in Nazism. To prove my point, I will quote Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who said,
ReplyDelete“After this, in about 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; until, in consequence of cataclysms – the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Aryan race (and the affect both Americas), as also most the land directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles – the Sixth Root-Race will have appeared on the stage of our Round.” Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Point Loma, CA: Aryan Theosophical Press, 1917), 445.
For this very reason, this novel is complex for a New Historicist who is familiar with the occult underbelly of Nazism. The Hitler Youth was a brainwashing machine that inducted children into the occult and it is very sad to see the hatred Grass had after he left the Hitler Youth. In fact, at the Psychoanalytical Level, I would say that Oskar Matzerath is the little boy that lost his youth to pure evil instead of developing as a child in the United States or other free countries.
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Eric Brame
In light of George Steiner’s Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman, Gunter Grass’ character in The Tin Drum, Oskar, is a little easier to understand. According to Steiner the “words lost their original meaning and acquired nightmarish definitions” (100). Taking into consideration the impact that the Nazis had on language, it is apparent that Grass uses Oskar and his obsessive drumming as a way to communicate without words. It is very rare in the book that Oskar speaks. However, he often uses his drum to cope with intense emotions, disturbances and forgetfulness. Oskar recognizes that words like machine guns and double turrets had become “so easily written” and therefore lost their meaning and significance (Grass 222). As previously mentioned, his method of overcoming that loss of meaning within the German language is found in his drum. For example, when Oskar loses his mother he wishes he could cope with it by sitting “on the tapering foot end of the coffin, drumming if possible, drumming under the earth until the sticks rotted out of his hand” (Grass 165). Another time that this can be seen is when he is disturbed after watching the eels come out of the horses head at the dock. Oskar “ran away from the gulls and Matzerath, beating [his] fist on [his] drum as [he] ran” (Grass 153). While most of the time Oskar drums to deal with those intense emotions, he also drums to remember his stories. Oskar explains that after Maria visits him she takes and organizes the drum that he “wrecked during [his] saga of Herbert Truczinski’s back” as she does with all of his drums (Grass 209). In this way, the drums hold more historical value for Oskar than his emotions or even his memories if they were to stand-alone, limited to the written word. The drums enable him to not only remember but also cope with his past.
ReplyDeleteAn imperative factor in Grass’s ability to reveal the Nazi abuse of the German language can be found in the author’s parodying of the novel’s conventions. In The Tin Drum, the rigid chronology of Oskar’s tales perhaps reflects upon the explicitly documented and meticulously ordered regime of the Reich. However, Oskar’s obscure way of thinking and speaking to the reader acts as a mode of defiance toward the Nazi regime’s conformist ways. In having Oskar repeatedly contradict himself in his own thoughts, outwardly express his lack of trustworthiness as a narrator (of which he comically admits to at the beginning of the novel) and provide subtle yet piercing humor throughout his recount, Grass creates powerful instances of rebellion in his writing, in respect to the repressed German language, post-World War II.
ReplyDeleteOskar’s lack of coherence as a narrator, especially in his mental impairment and thus means of clearly expressing himself, illustrates Grass’s instant uprooting of the conventional novel structure, or as Steiner puts it: “He stomps like a boisterous giant through a literature often marked by slim volumes of whispered lyricism” (115). This can be recognized most prominently in the beginning of the book, where Oskar debates the many ways of setting up a novel: “You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern . . . or you can declare at the very start that it’s impossible to write a novel nowadays” (Grass 17). However, Grass has his narrator come to the unconventional conclusion that both he, Oskar, and his keeper, Bruno, are heroes despite them not fitting the typical standards. As a result, Grass rebels against Nazi constraints on typical structure. What is more, when Oskar throws off the beat of the Hitler Youth band in “The Rostrum,” it is blatant that Grass is mimicking, while simultaneously mocking the “hypnotic trance” that Nazi Germany was noted for (Steiner 99). In these unconventional instances, Grass thus stages a sense of rebellion toward Nazi constraints set upon the German language.
One particular section from the Steiner piece was that the "German language was not innocent of the horrors of Nazism." Germany, at the time when Hitler was coming to power, was not the happiest of places, and he was able to sense that. Steiner goes on to say that "words were committed to saying things no human mouth should ever have said," and the German people kept quiet about it. Oskar is a character who speaks the truth. He is a character that notices the truth in everyone he sees and desires to expose it. He saw what Jan and his mother were doing, and he eventually calls Jan "papa" during the Polish Post Office chapter. Oskar makes holes in glass to see if people will steal when it's right in front of them. Oskar is a character who says the truth, but he is definitely not a reliable narrator. He's a guy who's in a mental hospital, and he tells us that fact right away. He appears to speak the truth about the people, but we have no real way of knowing if anything he says is valid in the first place. Since the only really questionable parts of the story are the details about Oskar, I find those parts to be the only details that could be made up by him. He has no reason to lie about anyone else, but he could easily be deluded about his physical appearance and supposed abilities. I believe that Oskar is reliable about events in his life and the truths about the people he encounters, but he is very unreliable about himself.
ReplyDeleteSteiner’s point about the corruption of the German language by Nazi connotations is something that has pervaded world ideology. Personally, I cannot hear someone speaking German without a mental image of Hitler. They are automatically associated in my mind due to the generation in which I happened to be born. If by my case, Steiner’s entire theory can be supported, I assert that the German language has indeed been so polluted. Grass’s use of language simultaneously rebels against this contemporary prospective reality (in Oskar’s refusal to submit to use of language) and shoves this reality in the reader’s face; keeping the “wound open” for future generations to be directly exposed to the atrocious putrification occurring in the language in which Grass worked and li(o)ved. Grass chooses rich, visceral, blatant imagery and style to shock the reader into this awareness, and he causes Oskar to manifest this (lack of spoken) language through his drumming and screaming. By drumming, Oskar can express in an auditory manner the repressed anger – not just of the character, but of the author himself at the degradation of his lingual history. Drumbeats, which are also fragmented splices of sound, represent the constant fragmenting of Oskar’s life – as in his schizophrenia (mind), with his family unit, and in his society/world. It is only through creation of a pattern of these fragmented sounds (a beat/a rhythm) can beauty and emotion be understood and communicated. These patterns give order to the fragmented chaos, and we see this in Oskar’s compulsive need to drum in order to ease narration.
ReplyDeleteIn George Steiner’s essay, “A Note on Grass,” he presents the sheer brilliance of Grass’s poignant writing of The Tin Drum. According to Steiner, “In his two major novels Grass has had the nerve, the indispensable tactlessness to evoke the past. By force of his macabre, often obscene wit, he has rubbed the noses of his readers in the great filth, the vomit of their time” (Steiner 117). Undoubtedly, it is the reader’s full immersion in the “great filth” and the “vomit of their time,” which characterizes Grass’s literary brilliance and exposes the spewing hate of Nazi Germany (Steiner 117).
ReplyDeleteThroughout The Tin Drum, Grass revisits a past riddled with pain, a past that colors the world view of a German child under the Nazi Fuhrer. Grass’s exposure of past German “filth” can be seen when Oskar refers to Hitler as Santa Clause or the “gasman” (Grass 203). Grass explains, “An entire credulous nation believed, there’s faith for you, in Santa Clause. But Santa Clause was really the gasman….And he said: I am the Savior of this world, without me you can’t cook. And he was not too demanding, he offered special rates, turned on the freshly polished gas cocks, and let the Holy Ghost pour forth, so the dove…might be cooked” (Grass 203). This allusion to Hitler as the “gasman,” not only “rubs” the reader’s nose in the horrific reality of the concentration camps, but it also presents the Nazi connection with Christianity and their use of propaganda (Grass 203). Through the usage of skewed religious language, the Nazis sought to justify their heinous acts. Connecting Santa Clause to Hitler shows the power of language and propaganda. The visualization of Hitler pouring gas into the concentration camps burns suffering into the reader’s consciousness and denies him/her the freedom of selectively “forgetting” Germany’s role in the tragic genocide of the Jewish people.
Poignantly written, Grass offers, “Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn’t God in His heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coat-hanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe, can perfectly well serve as an unforgettable witness to every one of our acts” (Grass 192-193). It is the memory of Germany, with all its unspeakable acts, that Grass evokes within the reader, pledging to give a voice to the tragic loss of his time.
The relevance of language in molding the normative social constructs of a population often goes unaddressed when examining history. It is easy to study cultural tendencies without giving much thought towards the spoken word because language is usually accepted as a given that goes unquestioned. However, language certainly plays a serious role in individual perception. In his essay discussing the instrumental relevance of language in Nazi Germany, George Steiner shows how the perversion of words can lead to a certain denial of truths blatantly present in front of the eyes. The examples Steiner offers of the seemingly innocent words used by Nazis for methods of committing murder serve to prove how language can mask atrocities. When Hitler called his master plan the “final solution,” the words were just shiny wrapping paper camouflaging the true horrors of the plan that called for the mass murder of millions of human beings. In short, as long as we use language as a primary tool in communicating thoughts and ideas, it is easy to misrepresent reality.
ReplyDeleteIn the tin drum, Gunther Grass challenges the status that language has taken in modern society by introducing a character (Oskar) who mostly goes without the use of verbal speech in communicating. Without relying on language, Oskar’s character is contemplative and extremely observational. He sits quietly pretending to be ignorant as he watches the adults around him get tangled in a mess of words. A humorous example of this is when Oskar decides to throw himself down the stairs so that there is an apparent reason for his stunted growth. While he gives the impression that he was able to control his growth simply by willing to do so, he exposes the satire in language when he says that he wanted to ease the adult’s minds by putting some sort of a name or concrete reason for it. While Oskar’s character is wholly unreliable and unarguably not entirely morally sound, he does manage to expose the irony in the shallow use of language and the skewed perceptions of individuals in society of the time.
In George Steiner’s piece he discusses how language, more specifically the German language, was became “A language being used to run hell, getting the habits of hell into its syntax”(Steiner 100) and was “used to destroy what there is in man of man and to restore to governance what there is of beast” (Steiner 100). In terms of The Tin Drum, Oskar finds himself relying on his drum as a means of communicating his emotions rather than using the German language. He beings to discuss and analyze the meaning of being a Resistance Fighter in the German society and wonders if he himself fit into that category. Oskar states that “it was not only demonstrations of a brown hue that I attacked with my drumming” (Grass 124) which further solidifies the idea how Oskar finds his voice through his drumming. Steiner also goes on to describe the effects of the use of language by stating that when it becomes used negatively “it will no longer perform…its two principal functions: the conveyance of humane order which we call law, and the communication of the quick of the human spirit which we call grace” (Steiner 101). This can be compared to Oskar’s statement that “yes, my work was destructive… what I did not defeat with my drum, I killed with my voice” (Grass 125) which shows that language is not Oskar’s initial means of communication because of its inability to perform the functions described by Steiner. The idea of Oskar’s work being “destructive” along with his inability to rely on the German language to express himself further shows how Grass wanted to allow the reader to see the intensity of the German plight during the time of Oskar’s life.
ReplyDeleteIt could be argued, and perhaps after reading Steiner’s Essays on Language, that many, if not all the German writers, would agree that Nazism changed the German language into the “parlance of hell” (115). Nazis were clever to understand the power of language and they were not afraid to use it for destruction – of people and linguist origin. Like Steiner mentions on page 99, “Nazism found in the language precisely what it needed to give voice to its savagery.” But it was not only the Nazis who resort to language to deceive, control, or manipulate. The Nazis had a profound influence in the course of the world during and after the war; even authors, especially European, such as Grass, were also influenced by what the Nazis had done to the German language, which in turn had corrupted German society. Without a sane language, there are no sane people. In The Tin Drum, for example, the power of language depicts the aberrations that Oskar has for pretty much everyone, not just grownups, but also children. Because German had acquired “nightmarish definitions,” communication for Oskar loses its literal and positive values thus like the Nazis themselves, he too uses language to confuse people (and the readers). However, through Oskar, Grass singles out the moments of truth through an untrustworthy narrator revealing Grass’s lonely, discontented, and independent view of the world. The clearest example can be seen in the beginning of the book, on page 17, when Oskar gives his viewpoint on writing novels and the extinction of epic heroes in literature, “because individuality is a thing of the past, because man is alone in his loneliness…and men together make up a ‘lonely mass’ without names and heroes.”
ReplyDeleteWhat most struck me about Grass’ use of language is the blatant honesty embedded throughout the text. Through such use of bluntness, “Grass has had the nerve, the indispensable tactlessness to evoke the past” which so many Germans had been running away from (Steiner 117). This so often controversial (yet admirable) technique is achieved through Grass’ overall textual composition; the manner in which Oskar narrates depicts the true rawness of the situation. The event chronology in the novel isn’t a stable chain of events as typically displayed in traditional novels, instead Grass disorients the reader in order to display the overall sentiment of confusion felt throughout that time. Oskar’s story telling is scattered, messy and through it he often reveals former truths to be lies and visa versa. This fickle narration can be assumed to depict Grass’ personal sentiments towards the war, and the sheer confusion that many people felt throughout such period. Through the simple technique of an unreliable narrator and an uneasy sense of chronology, Grass emphasizes the realness of the experiences leading up and during the war time. This use of language enables the reader to insert themselves into a text that is otherwise quite difficult to connect to.
ReplyDeleteIn the chapter “Faith, Hope, Love,” I found that Grass subverted both language and imagery as Steiner articulated in the essay selection of George Steiner’s book, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman. In which, he quotes Thomas Mann as saying, “The mystery of language is a great one; the responsibility for a language and for its purity is of a symbolic and spiritual kind; this responsibility does not have merely and aesthetic sense. The responsibility of language is, in essence, human responsibility” (Steiner, 102). I found particularly interesting and applicable to in that Grass describes those three chapter title words, faith, love and hope as white elephants: “. . . there remained after faith and anticipated love, only the third white elephant of the Epistle to the Corinthians: hope” (Grass, 205). If we take the meaning of a white elephant as expensive and useless, then faith, hope and love must be expensive and useless too.
ReplyDeleteSteiner also states, “The language . . . was called upon to enforce innumerable falsehoods, to persuade the Germans that the war was just and everywhere victorious.” Faith is Santa Claus turns into faith in the gasman, “. . . the Saviour of this world, without me you can’t cook” (Grass, 203). Yet the gasman is twisted to represent death, but sold as nourishment, sustenance and life. Much the same way that the Nazi’s, the “butchers who fill dictionaries and sausage with language and sausage” feeds the Germans the “priceless sausages that he called faith, hope, and love, which he advertised as easily digestible” (Grass, 205). It is because of those lies that Steiner describes as allowing “the circle of vengeance” to become a blizzard blanket that thickens and closes in on Germany that no one expects the atrocities are occurring next door from the same Santa Claus that turns on their meters, saving oil, saving money. “But you can’t lock up disaster in a cellar. It drains into the sewer pipes, spreads to the gas pipes, and gets into every household with the gas. And no one who sets his soup kettle on the bluish flames suspects that disaster is bringing his supper to a boil” (Grass, 197).
It is also in that subterfuge of language that I feel Gunter Grass is compelled to uncover, to rehash the past, to call a spade a spade, to call Paul, Saul, to peel the gasman’s mask, subtly before he changes form again.
Cassie Turner
Grass uses his character of Oskar to flush out the inadequacies and failures of the German people. As a character, Oskar purposefully exposes people’s short comings and his manipulation of language allows him to extend his control onto those around him. This purposeful usage of language could parallel how the Nazi regime effectively changed the connotations of words in their usage of the German language during the war. Their tainting of positive reinforcements to lie to the German people about the army’s advancement against the Allied forces left a lingering bad taste long after the completion of World War II.
ReplyDeleteThe same can be said of nearly every other word of the German language, due to the fact that the language was employed by the Nazis to commit atrocities against millions of people. The Reich not only used the German language to taunt and harass those they viewed inferior, but also used it to record their various victories and tortures of their captives.
With these facts in mind, Grass used The Tin Drum to express his world view regarding the actions of the Nazi regime during World War II. His novel, while on the surface seems to merely follow the ramblings of a mental health patient, is in actuality an exhibition of the power of words and how their usage can change a previously cemented meaning. By writing about Germany’s history, Grass forces readers to remember the past and prevents those involved from sweeping it under the rug. Oskar’s wordplay through the novel is used as a representation of Hitler’s attempt at wordplay to cement the support of the German people.
SYDNI GONZALEZ
ReplyDeleteOskar's character is, I think, even more of a commentary on Grass's worldview and how he felt about the Germans and Nazi Germany than anything else. As we discussed in class, Oskar's decisions to stay small, to physically fight this Aryan appearance and to go against all "order" all that is Germany is representative of Grass's distaste toward Nazi Germany. Not only Nazi Germany, but adulthod and even life itself as is shown in the sections where Oskar discusses his grandparents. Using symbolism of natural things as opposed to this ugly Germany with the blatant confession of wanting to "return to the womb", Grass plays with the idea of perhaps life being better never lived if it meant he was ging to have to do all that he did.
On top of all of this, there are serious elements of ruined childhood, disappointment in the people we should look up to (adults/authority figures) and an element of support for the arts--i felt at least. the drum is so symbolic of the power of music and rhythm and how it is something that breaks boundaries and can wake people from a zombie-like state of brainwashing that was happening to people under Nazi influence.
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ReplyDelete“You still don’t understand? You sons of bitches. Don’t you understand anything? You will be burned! Burned to a cinder! Turned into ashes” (Wiesel 31). As a fifteen year old boy, Wiesel had to pretend to be 18. His father had to act as though he was 40 (see Wiesel 30). This creates a contrary issue of morality due to passages such as “Thou shalt not murder” (cf. Exodus 20:1ff). It makes me wonder what we use to measure morality! Every single time we attempt to establish our own rules, issues such as the Shoah occur. In fact, it makes me ponder the nature of Humanity. Even Augustine and John Calvin explain and argue Total Depravity, a doctrine that states that we are not capable of morality without God. If they are right, it would mean that Adolf Hitler’s god was not YHWH. Instead, he appealed to the forces of darkness which warped him and totally destroyed what he was, inside and out. Wiesel confirms my stance as an Augustinian philosopher that humanity is completely depraved and it is only by divine intervention that Adolf Hitler did not rule the world with a thousand year empire. The question of morality with the Nazis makes me blood proverbially boil. Due to this, Night, was one of the few books that made me emotionally attached to it.
ReplyDeleteEric Brame
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