Essay Questions

How does the author use Oskar’s unreliability as a narrator to create a metaphorical reflection of post-WWII German national consciousness?

Oskar is definitely unreliable as a narrator. The opening lines are a confession to being incarcerated in a mental asylum and that raises question of veracity whether it is true or whether it is a false. On a number of occasions Oskar presents contradictory versions of the same event. At various points along the timeline, Oskar claims both to be responsible for the deaths of each parent and denies playing any part. The two stories Oskar offers on the last day of Jan Bronki’s life is particularly telling: in only one version does Oskar portray himself as complicit in the eventual execution by the Nazis. Most demonstrative of all, however, is Oskar’s alteration of the events surrounding the death of Alfred Matzerath. He is only accidentally responsible the Nazis murdering his father in the first account while just one chapter later he is almost boasting about how he betrayed his father. This narrative unreliability becomes a metaphor for the equally unreliable narratives sketched out by the German people following the defeat of the Nazis. During the fascist rise to power and throughout the war, the complicity of the German people was essential to their supremacy. Following their demise, however, it often seemed to be impossible to find a single German capable of admitting complicity except under the threat of imprisonment or immediate death.

What techniques are used to reflect this fragmentation of the German population as willingly complicit in Nazi atrocities while claiming coercion as justification following the war?

Oskar’s unique physical situation simultaneously presents him as both a childish innocent and a knowing adult. The brilliance of this central conceit is that it does reflect the German consciousness of simultaneously being aware of Nazi atrocities long before they became the most monstrous of the 20th century while also making claims to innocence of any knowledge of those monstrous extremes. In addition to being physically divergent, Oskar’s identity is also presented dualistically. The narrative is a first-person perspective, but at different times Oskar replaces the “I” of self-identity to refer to himself in the third person. This detachment from the self becomes another metaphor for a strain of rejection and denial of the self within the German consciousness: by adopting the third person reference to “them” and “they” when speaking of Nazi atrocities, alienation from individual responsibility is accomplished.

What is the singular historical symbolism represented by Oskar’s absolutely unique physical appearance?

Oskar is a man in a diminutive body. Either a child talking like an adult or an adult speaking like a child. One thing he is definitely not is the image of Aryan superiority forwarded as the ideal in fascist ideology: tall, strong and blonde. Oskar is none of those things; he is almost the exact opposite, in fact. He is small in physique, can’t be trusted to tell the truth, is given to wild fits of outrageously improper public behavior and blessed with a magnificent gift for using all his apparent failings in the service of manipulating others. Does that description sound like someone else from the 1930’s Germany in which the story takes place?