The Tin Drum

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Book 1, Chapters 1-8

Book 1, Chapters 9-16

Book 2, Chapters 1-9

Book 2, Chapters 10-18

Book 3, Chapters 1-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

The Tin Drums

In the immediate aftermath of his birth, Oskar overhears Alfred and Agnes discussing his future. Alfred believes that his newborn son will grow up to be a grocer, just like him. Oskar is horrified. He considers climbing back into his mother's womb and reversing the circumstances of his birth until he overhears Agnes promising to buy him a tin drum on his third birthday. For the young boy who has stopped growing at three years old and who is in possession of a fully-developed consciousness, the drum is an important tool. It is not only a symbol of an optimistic future and a life worth living, but one of the only ways in which Oskar can communicate effectively with the world. The drums symbolize the inherent desire for communication amidst the alienation Oskar feels. He is alienated not because he does not want to forge relationships with other people, but because he is practically speaking a different language.

Oskar's ability to turn his drumming into a means of expression develops to the point where he can elicit an emotional reaction through his playing. When working in places like the Onion Cellar or when he receives a recording contract and tours across the country, his audiences feel his emotions. He plays to rekindle his memories and the emotional qualities of these memories have a profound effect on the listeners. Whether describing nostalgic moments from a more innocent past or ruminating on the death of his mother, Oskar's ability to convey emotions through his drumming is a symbolic allegory to the book itself.

During the early stages of his emotional development, Oskar is more interested in acquiring new drums than he is with any person. He ignores the violence of Kristallnacht and the suicide of a close acquaintance because he is more concerned about his drums. Jan's doomed return to the Polish Post Office only happens because Oskar wants his drum repaired. In these moments, Oskar is demonstrably more attached to his drums than his loved ones. After the death of Alfred, however, Oskar throws his drum into his presumptive father's grave. He symbolically rejects his drum and resolves to reintegrate himself into society. He matures in a physical and emotional sense in this moment; his rejection of the drum is a symbolic demonstration of his desire to mature. Later, when he is in the psychiatric hospital, Oskar continues to play the drum. By this time, his maturation is complete and the drumming is an exercise in nostalgia, representing his desire to investigate his own past.

The “Mental Institution”

The opening line of The Tin Drum reveals to the audience that the narrator of the novel is currently residing in a “mental institution”—an outdated term for a psychiatric hospital. Oskar can understand why his audience may not consider a patient in such a facility to be a reliable narrator. To Oskar the symbolism of the institution is an annoyance but one he hopes to dispel over the course of the novel. He does not particularly care if the audience considers him unreliable because the audience is not necessarily his motivation for writing his memoir. Instead, he is writing for posterity. He wants the story of his life to function more as a confession of his sins than as a reliable narrative of his life. In this sense, Oskar recognizes and dismisses the idea of the institution as a symbol of unreliability because this is not particularly important to him or his objectives.

More importantly, the symbolism of the institution is secondary for Oskar partly due to his inability to define sanity in a world that has descended into chaos. Amid the rise of fascism, World War II, the Holocaust, and his litany of personal tragedies and mistakes, Oskar recognizes the inherent irony of the institution. The institution is a physical symbol of people's desire to create a clear boundary between the acceptable and the unacceptable. Oskar is considered to be unacceptable, so he is placed inside the institution as a symbolic demonstration of his lack of sanity, separated from the world. However, the world outside is more chaotic, immoral, senseless, and ridiculous than anything any individual patient in the institution could be. The irony of the institution is that society is still trying to diagnose people as having lost their sanity, even after the horrors of the mid-20th century. There is no longer any reasonable distinction of sanity, Oskar suggests. As such, the institution becomes a symbol of the ironic absurdity of trying to define sanity.

Oskar has deliberately placed himself in the institution because he seeks judgement. His confinement is purposeful and built on shaky foundations. He convinced Vittlar to go to the police and lie about the ringed finger found in the field. As a result, Oskar is sent to the institution for a crime he did not commit. In truth, Oskar is seeking punishment for the crimes he did commit but which have been conveniently forgotten by a society which is keen to move on. The institution and Oskar's confinement in the institution are a symbol of one man's refusal to move on. That he is imprisoned under false pretenses speaks to the absurdity of post-war society itself, while the desperate desire for judgement is one of the sanest acts in the novel. Oskar sees the institution as a means of self-flagellation, allowing him to inflict the punishment on himself that society refuses to deliver.

The Ringed Fingers

Twice in The Tin Drum, Oskar finds a severed finger with a ring. He finds the first while working in a graveyard and he presumes that the finger was severed by a motorized digger. The second is brought to him by a rented dog while he is walking through a field. The repetition of the ringed finger has a symbolic significance in a structural sense: Many ideas, themes, actions, and images are repeated or echoed throughout the novel. The ringed finger appears at significant moments to symbolize the way in which Oskar and other characters become trapped in cycles that they are forced to perpetuate. The characters bear witness to these repetitions and struggle to understand their meaning.

The first time Oskar finds a severed finger, he is inspired. Rather than seeking out punishment, he begins to view himself in a different light. He compares himself to the titular character of Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Hamlet delivers a monologue to the skull of a departed friend. Oskar tries to achieve the same level of profundity by talking to an anonymous finger, trying to sublimate the finger’s implied act of wartime violence into something more poetic and ego-centric. Oskar's need to project meaning and symbolism onto this anonymous finger is symbolic in itself, speaking to his desire to perceive meaning in the anonymous, constant violence of the world around him. When Oskar sees the second ringed finger, however, he makes a decision: Instead of trying to ignore the finger’s violent context, he uses it to punish himself for the repeated mistakes of the past. By understanding the severed finger as a symbol of cyclical behavior, Oskar tries to break free from the pattern and bring about the judgement that he craves.