• In total there are 8 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 8 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Ch. 8, The Stockturm. Long-Distance Song Effects

#87: Sept. - Oct. 2010 (Fiction)
User avatar
Suzanne

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Book General
Posts: 2513
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 10:51 pm
14
Location: New Jersey
Has thanked: 518 times
Been thanked: 399 times

Ch. 8, The Stockturm. Long-Distance Song Effects

Unread post

The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass

Book One, Chapter eight
The Stockturm. Long Distance Song Effects
User avatar
GaryG48
Sophomore
Posts: 260
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 9:29 pm
14
Location: Wheaton, Illinois, USA
Has thanked: 26 times
Been thanked: 34 times

Re: Ch. 8, The Stockturm. Long-Distance Song Effects

Unread post

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.
--Gary

"Freedom is feeling easy in your harness" --Robert Frost
Post Reply

Return to “The Tin Drum - by Gunter Grass”