Sculptures and Mother Figures in Günter Grass' TIN DRUM

Objects in Grass' novels often play as important a role as people do. In fact, characters are so involved with some objects—for instance, Herbert Truczinski with Niobe—that the object seems to acquire a life of its own and actually participates in the action.6 It is fitting that in The Tin Drum (1959),5 concerned as it is with popular art and artists, popular art objects are frequently the center of attention and are used by the author to reflect significant attitudes of the hero-narrator Oskar and of other main characters.

Two of these, both representations of motherhood, will concern us in this study: the plaster cast figure of the Virgin Mary with Jesus and John the Baptist that stands in the church, and the galleon figurehead Niobe that stands in the museum of the hero's home town. The sculptures function as matrixes upon which the hero and other male characters project their conscious and unconscious attitudes, feelings, wishes, fears, needs, and desires concerning women. They are therefore endowed with the two universal aspects of the feminine: woman as nurturing, protective, positive (the good mother—Mary); and woman as tempting, devouring, engulfing, castrating (the terrible mother—Nlobe).1,8,²⁰ They are introduced immediately before (Mary) and after (Niobe) the death of Oskar's mother, showing that both aspects of the mother survive the death of the actual mother. Thus the two figures function as narrative devices which establish poles of tension.4 They do this on two levels. On the one hand, the sculptures and their stories are historical allegories of good and bad mother figures and embody Grass' historical-social criticism. At the same time they are also parodies of psychological typesand of stereotyped human interactions. Although both levels are tightly interwoven in the novel, only the psychological interpretation of the