Aside from the fact that Oskar is a lunatic, it seams quite
rational that he’d like to crawl back into the cradle or his mother’s womb.
Living through the terrors of World War II, Who wouldn’t want to escape back
into their innocence? If I lived throughout the holocaust and Nazi Germany, I
know that I’d want to escape. By refusing to grow up and banging on his tin
drum, Oskar can, in ways, avoid the realities of the war. However, it becomes
inevitable to completely avoid and isolate himself from the world. Therefor, he
is often forced to cope with reality and the world in which he lives.
Literary Works Online
Art Watch - NOLA.com
clustrmap
Contributors
Blog Archive
-
▼
2013
(323)
-
▼
August
(31)
- Biloxi Blues
- Music not in Nazi Germany
- Music in Nazi Germany
- <!--[if gte mso 9]> 0 0 1 80 462 St....
- <!--[if gte mso 9]> 0 0 1 89 508 St....
- Thoughts on the Eel Scene
- Good v. Evil
- Hussars: The Protectors of the Amoeba
- The Tin Drum: A Reluctant Criticism
- The Tin Drum... A Really Weird Book
- Hitler's Pawn: The Margaret Lambert Story
- Art after the Holocaust in Prague
- Time Loops in 100 Years of Solitude
- New Orleans vs. Macondo
- 54 Years of Solitude: The Real Life Macondo
- One Hundred Years of Solitude vs. Tin Drum
- Reflection on the Tin Drum
- Reflection on One Hundred Years of Solitude
- The Tin Drum in The Tin Drum
- Finally Coming Full Circle
- Destruction and Creation in The Tin Drum
- Inception: Solitude within Solitude within Solitude
- Cycles of Morals
- <!--[if gte mso 9]> 0 0 1 114 653 St...
- BIg Fish and Marquez
- Magical Realism in 100 Years of Solitude
- My First Post!
- Family
- Latin America: The Red-Headed (Hipster) Stepchild ...
- Short Reflection
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
-
▼
August
(31)
3 comments:
When we talked about Oskar's constant mentions of wanting to return to the womb, I immediately thought of the poem we read sophomore year, The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell:
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
When faced physically and even emotionally traumatic situations, both Oskar and the ball turret gunner transport themselves back to a time of safety and innocence. They find themselves thinking to a place free from danger and protected in their own isolation, the womb. The ball turret gunner, in his final stages of life, embodies the very beginning of his own existence and thus comes full circle. Oskar, however, makes every attempt to stay as close to a time in his mother's womb as possible by refusing at all cost to grow older.
That's a really great point. I never thought of Oskar wanting to escape back into the womb as a coping (or not coping) mechanism for the reality of war. I always looked at his desire to escape as being a cowardly way for him to avoid responsibility. I basically made this judgement based on my previous lack of sympathy for him.
This really makes me think of what we talked about in the Introduction; how Grass wrote The Tin Drum to process the Pre-Nazi, Nazi, and Post-Nazi era of German history. I think Oskar's compulsion to escape really contrasts him from Grass. Grass forced himself to face his demons head-on, whereas Oskar only faces his demons when he has no way out.
Post a Comment