Gunter Grass - novel - 1959 - p. 32

 Narrated by protagonist Oskar Matzerath, The Tin Drum recounts the life of a man telling his story while confined to a mental hospital in Poland. Though he has the cognitive and emotional capacities of a neurotypical adult, he has decided never to grow up after learning from his father that he is fated to become a grocer. Possessed of a shriek that can inflict physical damage, Oskar is also an avid drummer and works with a performing troupe to entertain German soldiers on the front lines before later joining a street gang.

Oskar is influenced by the presence of two father figures: one a member of the Nazi Party who dies while attempting to avoid discovery as a Nazi and the other a Pole who dies resisting the German invasion of Poland. Oskar is inadvertently complicit in the deaths of both. Following the war, Oskar and his mother move to Dusseldorf, Germany, where he supports himself by modeling nude and engraving tombstones. He finally achieves success as a musician but loses all after finding the severed finger of his former would-be lover, Sister Dorothea. He falsely confesses to her murder and is sentenced to the institution from which he narrates the story.

The book is supposedly the origin of the idiom “to beat a tin drum,” which refers to the practice of drawing attention to an issue by causing a disturbance.

Key elements: crime, Europe, fascism, father figures, infidelity, mental illness