The Hunger Games and Waiting for the Barbarians

I can understand why the Nobel Prize Committee approves of this novel.  When I finished the book it seemed to have no purpose, then I thought about the other books we’ve read and I categorized the story as a more in depth look at one of the cycles from A Hundred Years of Solitude.  The town was living happily until a government got involved.  The Empire caused fear within the town to keep them suppressed.  By supplying soldiers they gave the townspeople hope, but not enough hope that they still feel safe.  While they are in fear and the soldiers are among them, the soldiers have the ability to exploit the people.  When they enter shops, they take what they want and leave without paying.  The owners of the stores do not object, because there is nobody else to complain to.  The soldiers sleep with the daughters in town, and the only enemy they think they know is unseen and minding their own business.

            This story bears resemblance to A Hundred Years of Solitude, but it also is very similar to another story: The Hunger Games.  Suzanne Collins wrote of a time when the districts are isolated yet kept behind walls.  The Capitol defends the situation by saying they are protecting the people, but in reality the fear is a key to exploitation.  The Nobel Committee would never award Suzanne Collins with a Nobel Prize because she is American and her books are very popular.  They are extremely accessible and well liked since there is a love story involving young white people rather than an old man discovering young women are not actually interested in him. 

            I’m happy with the ending to Waiting for the Barbarians because the Empire has assured the barbarian’s victory.  They say the barbarians are waiting for the townspeople to go back from where they came and the Magistrate tells the policeman that it is only a matter of time before they have to leave because of the salt in the lake.  The end of the novel shows that the barbarians were right; the people all went back to where they came and probably died in the process.  

Tin Drum: Murder -JK

            The farther I got into the novel the less I trusted Oskar, and the more disturbed I became with the story. The unsettling nature of the work was powerful, the fact that the issues such as sex war and death are being taken on by a man in a child’s body added to the twisted structure of the Tin Drum.  While Oskar provides us with evidence to prove he is not guilty of killing Sister Dorothea I believe he is the one who killed her.

            Oskar is obsessed with being a child, for he can lack of emotion and empathy, yet he takes it to another level, for the extent to which he is cold and distant is not childlike at all. His appearance is a façade, a way to act cruel and not be punished for it.  His placement into a mental hospital is fitting, for his actions throughout the novel are filled with madness.  

            He uses his obsessions to glaze over death and murder. Earlier in the work Oskar kept trying to force Jan to get him the new drum off of the shelf during an attack. He described a shell hitting Kobyella, and yet his focus shifts, within the same line, to the drum which is now within reach thanks to the shell. It is only after he gets a new drum does he then address the injured body of Kobyella (217). The jumps in focus do not diminish the violence, instead it adds to it, as a childish obsession highlights the intense actions.

            When it comes to Sister Dorothea, his obsession with her finger, praying over it and preserving it may have convinced Vittlar of Oskar’s innocence I think it simply fits into Oskar’s way of dealing with death, focusing on something trivial in the scope of the entire issue. Oskar was too calm when discovering the finger; his description of the Sister did not lead me to believe he could simply look at the finger and immediately know who it belonged to.  I see his obsessive love for the nurse as a motive, and just as his drums were destroyed by his constant usage, I think he destroyed Sister Dorothea.

Ragged Soldier-Souls

The section of The Tin Drum between pages 314 and 324 features a change in narrative structure in the novel. In this section Oskar recounts a dialogue he has recorded of a visit he and Bebra’s troupe made to the Atlantic seawall the night before the Allies’ European invasion. The action of writing down this event as a precise dialogue echoes a theme within this section about looking back at the war and returning from the war to civilian life—how do people pick up the pieces? Grass makes connections between the built, concrete landscape (“these pillboxes will still be standing because pillboxes always remain standing, even when everything else collapses” [317]) and the way that memories, particularly those horrific memories of war, remain long after the end.

            The Corporal Lankes presents the strongest example of this theme. Lankes tries to make art out of the drudgery of building pillboxes: “I’m hoping to use my knowledge working with cement when it’s over. Everything’s going to have to be rebuilt back home” (314). This statement presents a complex concept about the outcome of the war. To say that he will use his knowledge of cement when the war is over implies a belief that he will survive, will go on to do a practical everyman’s job—construction. However, to suggest that Germany will need to be rebuilt speaks to a pessimistic outlook on the outcome of the war. As we learn, Lankes is an artist who could never have become part of the Nazi Propaganda Corps because “[his] stuff’s too oblique for present tastes” (316). However, if what Oskar is doing by recording this conversation could be considered art—after all it is part of a Nobel Prize winning novel—then what Lankes is doing is also recording, creating art, by embedding his “Oblique Formations” (318) into the bland, concrete walls of the enduring pillboxes. Lankes describes this art as work that

One fine day a so-called archaeologist will arrive and say to himself, What an artistically impoverished age…then he’ll run across [Bunkers 4-7], he’ll see my structurally oblique formations, and say to himself: Let’s have a look at this. Interesting. One might almost say magical; menacing, yet imbued with striking spirituality. (318)

            The connection Grass seems to make is that Lankes will go on to make art after the war, since he is an artist. Yet he will work art out of the cement that represents this hard, brutal Normandy front, a front where frolicking nuns are mowed down by machineguns, where puppies are filled into the cement out of hardened, superstition and summarize this experience as, “Mystical, Barbaric, Bored” (318). The idea of encasing small, innocent animals into the cement also represents the way in which the soldiers literally build a perilous concrete wall around the soft territory, the homeland they are to preserve and protect, and metaphorically, an impenetrable barrier around that softened vulnerability that makes them human. Grass extends this metaphor when Lankes states, “Most of my comrades are country boys. And even today, when they build a house or a barn or a village church, they feel they have to wall something living” (315). Grass suggests from this statement that this formation, abiotic and heavy, comes back home with these soldiers after the war.

            For Grass to suggest that Lankes wants to put his experiences to work in the form of architecture is to say that the act of making art is as important, as essential as construction to the foundations of civilization. In recording memory, Grass implies that Oskar and Lankes take the oblique formation that is memory in our head and give it solid, visible form. To put this idea within the context of Oskar’s art and within the context of Lankes as an artist thrust into the war, Grass seems to suggest that these ravaged soldier-souls, these images and memories, become a ruthlessly ugly art in themselves.

Oskar as Jesus

Laura Ostrowski

4/7/2013

            If anyone was unsure as to Oskar’s God complex, it can certainly be put to rest in the section titled, “The Dusters.” The opening sentence reads, “Oskar was not cut out to follow in Christ’s footsteps.” Apparently, at least in Oskar’s case, the alternative to not following Christ is to believe that one is Christ. Within this chapter, he introduces himself to the Duster gang as Jesus. Another sentence admittedly confuses me, as he recalls, “The moment I repeated my confession as Christ’s follower…” One can certainly follow Christ, but would not say, especially to complete strangers, “I am Jesus.” This group of boys accepts him as Jesus, if only as his name on the surface, but then follows him into the chocolate factory, which is only the beginning. Disturbingly, he quotes what Jesus said to Oskar after the drumming incident in which Oskar becomes very angry with Jesus. The chapter ends with him shouting, “Follow thou me!” to the boys of the Dusters and leads them into the chocolate factory. To preface this chapter, Oskar tells the reader that this group of boys will become his “disciples,” which leaves little doubt to Oskar’s viewpoint that he is in fact God. The trait would also explain why he feels no guilt over Matzerath’s death. He does admit that it is his fault, but does not seem overly concerned. The same is true when Jan dies in the post office. While this may seem irrelevant, it remains true that serial killers often have this same “I am God” complex, and feel their acts are necessary. Oskar does not particularly express that these deaths are necessary or are even for a legitimate reason, but certainly does not seem even adequately guilty or upset by the occurrences. The most concrete evidence of Oskar’s absurd mental state is that after one of the Duster boys separates Jesus from the statue in the church, Oskar actually sits in his place. I remain undecided as to whether Oskar is consciously trying to be powerful and be Jesus, or if he really believes he is Jesus, or even something better.

Circles in The Tin Drum

The novel The Tin Drum has a very apparent cyclical theme, similar to One Hundred Years of Solitude. It can be seen most clearly through Oskar’s doubt of parentage. He first questions his own parentage because while his mother is married to Matzareth, Oskar often witnesses his mothers affair with Jan Bronski. This question comes up many times in the first section of the novel, but is often not merely a question of who is his biological father but rather who is his future self. He uses this uncertainty to explain why he feels that he does not have as strong a relationship with Matzareth as he does with Jan. The uncertainty comes to a full circle when Maria gives birth to Kurt. Since she had sex with Matzareth and Oskar (claims) to also have had intercourse with her, Oskar does not know if Kurt is his son or his brother. This uncertainty, while not quite as pervasive as the question of Oskar’s father, is recalled many times in the second half of the novel.

            However, one has to wonder if the cycles in this novel don’t fit together just a bit too well. There are many times throughout the novel in which Oskar corrects himself. For example, in book two, the narrator explains that what he previously wrote was not correct and that he is “not too well satisfied” (246). He also says, “wishing to stick to the truth, I shall try to circumvent Oskar’s pen and make a few corrections” (246). This follows along with what I wrote about in my last post which was that the there is a strange disconnect between the narrator and his younger self, which leads to a question of the reliability of the narrator.

            But too much emphasis is put on the reliability of narrators. A narrator can never be 100% reliable or 100% unreliable because the character should be realistic, and if an author has written the character with enough development they will mirror humans in the sense that they can never be entirely dichotomous. This is something that I believe Grass does well. The fact that we can never really be sure about the parentage, or ever really know if Oskar is truly mad or if the imbalance came from him being wrongly accused for a murder. Just as certainty or reliability is never wrapped up neatly in real life, it is not as clear cut in well written novels. 

Truth in The Tin Drum

I want to point to a few of the major similarities I found between Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude and The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. In my analysis of the latter I mainly paid attention to the question of Oskar's reliability as a narrator, however, I approached the idea with thought in mind of previous discussions, such as external influences in the writing of a novel-like we see in Marquez' piece-which brings me to the first similarity between the two books. In addition to the Marxist like approach to crafting a story, that is the two authors borrowing tales from history to influence their stories, both employ magical realism to help the progression and belief in their messages as well. This brings me to my main point, which is the methodology employed in the two tales.
 Both authors similarly play with concepts of narration and history, and both in an episodic kind of way. With use of magical realism in 100 Years, we saw how Marquez tried to present his spin on history, and in a way teach a lesson-that history can be forgotten or ignored. He wanted to convey the idea that seemingly impossible events could become believable through detail-as he mentioned with his example of the absurd yet imaginable number of butterflies at one point in the story. But his lesson was more or less a commentary, and not necessarily an argument. Similarly, Grass' whole thing in The Tin Drum is about choice. That is the choice to seek or subscribe to certain truths, and I believe Grass tests this methodology or process of truth-finding by bringing into question the reliability of the narrator.
Throughout the book we follow a picaresque protagonist. The subject of the novel is no matter that can be approached comfortably as well. And while in the beginning we see the main character to hold such concrete ideas about the world and others, he changes by the end and realizes the nature of the human situation, which is dynamism and dealing with present situations-or future ones.
In Grass' nobel lecture and through his own personal philosophy and the way he constructs this novel we see that he believes identity is defined by ones own unique experiences and personal interactions with others and themselves. In a way similar to the ending of 100 Years, Grass sort of addresses the concept of how to approach history, and leaves it up to the reader to believe in his story and message, and follow his journey, which is seemingly uneasy and ever-changing, or to borrow from his nobel lecture "To Be Continued..."
Grass uses the eyes of a struggling Oskar, struggling against shame, innocence, guilt, and truth seeking, as a lens to personify the times he was born into and provoke thought about them.

Oskar's Unreliability Continued

  Oskar's Unreliability Continued               

             While reading the second half of the novel, I couldn’t help but think about the question that we brought up in class last week: is the narrator reliable?  After almost completing this half of the novel, I am inclined to believe that no, Oskar is not a reliable narrator in the slightest because there is something mentally wrong with him.  We, of course, have this suspicion from the start of the novel when we learn that Oskar is in a mental hospital.  However, the action that really confirmed his mental instability to me is his obsession with the nurse who lives next to him, Sister Dorothea.

                Oskar is unnaturally obsessed with Sister Dorothea even though they have never met.  Again, this does not come as a surprise because Oskar has always displayed deep affection for nurses.  Sister Dorothea seems to be different from the other nurses, however, because instead of simply feeling affection, Oskar is obsessed.  For instance, when Oskar goes through her mail, he notices that Dr. Werner sends Sister Dorothea letters on a regular basis.  Before he even opens a letter and looks at its contents, Oskar is deeply jealous of Dr. Werner.  He decides, “…to study medicine and graduate as quickly as possible.  I would become a doctor…. I would drive Dr. Werner out, expose him, reveal his incompetence” (464).  This hinted of Oskar’s mental instability for a few reasons.  First, he knows nothing of Dr. Werner’s intelligence and creates this story of him botching a larynx operation just because he is jealous of his attention toward Sister Dorothea.  Second, Oskar makes such a rash and unattainable decision to become a doctor when he has shown no interest in medicine before.  Lastly, I found this to point to Oskar’s unstable mental state because he has never met Sister Dorothea and has no reason for such a deep obsession.   Another action that illustrates Oskar’s obsession with Sister Dorothea is when he steals her hair and refers to it as a trophy.

                The last action that I believe illustrates Oskar as an unreliable narrator is when he finds the leather belt in the back of Sister Dorothea’s closet.  He is immediately brought into a flashback of the horse’s head on the shore when he was a boy with Jan, his mother, and Matzerath because the feel of the belt makes him think of eels.  He not only relives this scene, but also how his mother was never the same after that and ate fish until she died.  He gets lost in these dark thoughts until he, “repeatedly banished to the harbor jetty, gradually managed, with the help of the seagulls, to find his way back to the world of Sister Dorothea, at least to that half of the wardrobe that sheltered her empty but still alluring uniforms” (475).  This made me believe Oskar was unreliable not because he was reliving such bad memories, but because he could not be transported back to the present until he saw the nurses uniforms.  This again points to Oskar’s obsession with not only Sister Dorothea, but nurses in general.

                From this moment on, it was confirmed for me that the narrator was not reliable. Someone who has such a deep obsession for a person they do not know, and takes such personal actions (like stealing her hair) is someone that is untrustworthy.  While I am not positive of why Oskar is mentally unstable, I think it has to do with the traumas of his past and his unstable family life.