Resumo de The Tin Drum - GRASS, GUNTER

ABSTRACT ? GRASS, GUNTER ? THE TIN DRUM Penguin Classics. Surreal and often disturbing German novel about a boy who stays three years old throughout the twenty years of the rise and fall of Hitler?s Third Reich. Young Oskar is born into a violent world. He dislikes all of his family except for his mother and grandmother. As his parents argue and fight during his third birthday celebrations, (after giving him a toy red Tin Drum), Oscar wills himself to stay three years old forever. He has no wish to grow up to end up like his parents. In fact, he is every bit as monstrous as they are. His parents quickly grow irritated by him banging his drum all day, but there is a problem. If anyone tries to take it off him, Oskar screams loudly enough to literally break glass. Windows, spectacles, wine glasses, anything. Oskar watches helplessly as the Reich grows around him. The Germans murder the Jewish shopkeeper who sells drums for Oskar and who had an affair with his mother. The Mother herself is forced to eat fish and eels and by her brutal husband, and gets so addicted to the taste that she dies of fish poisoning. After witnessing the German capture of Dantzic, which was a German town then officially placed in Polish hands, and in effect, with Oscar seeing friends die in the first actual battle of World war Two, Oskar?s father gets a baby-sitter, who Oskar seduces. He gets her pregnant, and son ends up with a son who is older than him. (He is still three years old). Oskar then finds other Peter Pan like dwarfs who have refused to grow up and who have special gifts. Oskar falls for a girl who can read minds. Alas, a shell kills her as the allies begin to crush the Reich. Oskar rushes home. His days as a troop entertainer are over. He arrives as the Allies capture his hometown. His Father, an ardent Nazi, dies swallowing his membership badge pin, and choking on it. Oskar had forced him to do it. At his funeral. Oskar decides to grow up again. He faints into the grave to kick-start the slow recovery process. A film version was made of the book, and in the film the story ends as Oskar starts to grow. The book carries his story on for another ten years, as Oskar becomes a symbol of German?s divided self as an Iron Curtain country. The moral seems to be that Nazism stunts your growth in more ways than one. A truly original and chilling way to show the horrors of war.

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