Truth -- Well, Perhaps Not Essay

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And yet, of course, this is a far better fate than served out to so many. And so they are allowed to live. (Except for Oskar's beloved Roswitha, who is killed by the "good guys" -- the Allied troops at Normandy.)

Can Art Save Us?

Oskar appears to grow up when he converts his childish toy to a professional instrument and becomes a jazz player. Jazz was anathema to the Germans (at least to the Nazis) because it was a symbol of a lesser race. It was black music -- and blacks were barely human to the Nazis. In taking up such a musical trope, Oskar seems to cast off the Nazi part of himself, seems to find an authentic degree of redemption. But then he takes on the guilt of a murder that he did not commit. He is unable to escape the collective guilt of his nation, his people. And perhaps of himself. Perhaps, after all, he seems to be asserting to both himself and to the readers, that there are no good Germans.

But even as Oskar reverts to his childhood, and the drum reverts to his status as a toy, we have a sense that art is the key to salvation. Not, perhaps, for Oskar. Probably not, in fact for Oskar. And possibly not even for Grass. But for Germany. And for the world at large. Among the atrocities that the Nazis committed was the destruction of many pieces of artwork that they considered to be barbaric. This included a great deal of modern art -- and many piece of art created by Jews. These actions of destruction were not trivial, nor in any way peripheral to their other actions of destruction. Nazi leaders understand deeply and early on the power of art to free people. Art, like knowledge, has the power to set people free.

Art has the power to call into question conventional wisdom. It has the power to encourage, perhaps even enforce, insight. Art does not allow people to tell themselves comfortable stories and comforting lies. Grass's novel -- Oskar's narrative -- is meant to use art to substitute for the stories that the Germans had been telling themselves since the war ended.

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One of the questions that it is impossible not to ask as we read this book is to what extent art has saved Grass? It seems clear from his autobiography that he has at least tried to make it his salvation. In addition to being an author, he also studied and trained in sculpture and graphic arts. Art has been his medium through which to tell the truth of his own experience. For Grass too is a dual person, a man who cannot ever be entirely innocent. He served during the war in the Waffen SS, a branch of the Nazi Party. Although he was a teenager at the time (and so thus a child himself), he was also responsible. He was Oskar, of course, with both streams of the German DNA twinned and twined in himself as well.

An important way in which Grass's and Oskar's lives diverge is that Grass turned not only to art but to politics. As an adult he compensated for his participation in the Nazi forces by being an active and forceful member of the progressive left. His life asks us to acknowledge that while art has the power to transform, such transformations must be backed up by action in the political world.

Politics is played out in the public arena. Art is a more private affair. Redemption begins with private acts, with private insights, in the intimacy of our own minds and hearts and souls. This is where art is most powerful -- in the singular space of the author's vision and the reader's experience. But this must be followed -- if one is to change the world -- by action in the public sphere.

Grass reminds us at the end of his novel that it is not enough to be redeemed, not enough to know the truth. It is only the beginning of being sufficient when we stand on the mountaintops and shout it......

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