Re: Ch. 8, The Stockturm. Long-Distance Song Effects
I wonder how much of this book is Grass expounding his personal philosophy and how much is theater of the absurd?
"But, every time I shunned books, as scholars sometimes do, cursed them as verbal graveyards, and tried to make contact with the common folk; I ran up against the kids in our building and felt fortunate, after a few brushes with those cannibals, to return to my reading in one piece."
So, Oskar (Grass) is a scholar, or at least a reader, who sees common folk, or children anyway, as cannibals. Well, some of the children later in this chapter certainly do harm other children for their own amusement. But, it could all be a long metaphor for the unthinking mob that saluted Hitler at rallies.
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