Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass
Translated by Ralph Manheim
It's Danzig (Gdansk) during the early part of WWII. During the summer, a group of schoolboys swim out to a Polish Navy minesweeper that has been sunk and almost (but not quite) submerged off the coast.
There, Joachim Mahlke – a misfit and apparently fragile and sickly youngster – makes himself a hero to his peers as he dives down an into the wreck and returns with an increasing number of souvenirs.
As the summers pass and the boys become young men, nearing the time when they'll be called into the military (if they haven't already volunteered), their schooling is peppered with lectures from former alumni who have received the Iron Cross for their war service.
Mahlke, a boy/man with a vast Adam's apple that attracts attention to him as it bobs up and down (the mouse of the title), has spent years trying to disguise this physical trademark. When he surprises everyone by volunteering, his path to such a reward of his own is set.
The second part of the Danzig Trilogy – the first part being Grass's most famous book, the Nobel-cited Tin Drum – is, on the surface, a very simple tale by comparison with its predecessor.
But, like an iceberg – or the mostly-sunken minesweeper that dominates the story's landscape – there is much, much more to this brief (under 200 pages) tale.
It deals with the fight for acceptance – indeed, the desire, the need for group acceptance that, in Malkhe's case, drives what he does at school, amongst his peers, his teachers and later in the military.
Then there is patriotism – along with Malkhe's religiosity, Grass paints it as faith in a form of magic that promises rewards. For Malkhe, adhering to the patriotic faith is what he hopes will bring him fulfilment (salvation).
There are some complex things at work here. Pilenz, the narrator, frequently turns his dialogue into a direct address to Malkhe. Is this partly out of guilt for what happens (and what is that?) to his former friend? Is his apparent guilt a suggestion of the collective guilt that a society does/should feel about sending any of its young people to war?
Unlike some of Grass's other works – or perhaps, more importantly, unlike how Grass is sometimes viewed – Cat and Mouse is not an blaring anti-Nazi or anti-German polemic. Rather, it is a universal work that is written in such a way as to include rather than exclude readers from non-German backgrounds.
The ordinariness of the boys' interest in war – or at least, in the machinery of war (the ships etc) – is not unique to Nazi Germany.
The aspects of growing up that he describes, including relationships with peers and discovering sexuality, are also universal experiences.
Grass has a subtle dig at Nazi ideology in terms of the idea of 'pure manhood', but that also links with the role of religion in the story and Malkhe's obsession with the Madonna. The sexual play of the other boys is a healthy contrast to Malkhe's obsessions, and he alone is reluctant to indulge in their rather innocent masturbatory games. It could almost be a very early 1960s version of 'make love, not war'. Yet his obsession with, of all women, a virgin, is almost sexual in its intensity.
For Malkhe, even though he claims not to be convinced by religion, he adheres to and enjoys the forms, the rituals. Likewise, patriotism. In the context of Nazi Germany, it is a comment on how people so easily slipped into supporting (or being seen to support) something that they didn't really believe in.
But the idea that people support forms and rituals, without belief in what they mean, is also universal – and in a world where war continues to be prosecuted on spurious grounds, every bit as relevant.
As a little 'extra', for Grass buffs, there are two references to Oskar Matzerath, the beater of the Tin Drum, to spot, plus one to the Matzeraths' shop.
It is very, very good indeed.
Translated by Ralph Manheim
It's Danzig (Gdansk) during the early part of WWII. During the summer, a group of schoolboys swim out to a Polish Navy minesweeper that has been sunk and almost (but not quite) submerged off the coast.
There, Joachim Mahlke – a misfit and apparently fragile and sickly youngster – makes himself a hero to his peers as he dives down an into the wreck and returns with an increasing number of souvenirs.
As the summers pass and the boys become young men, nearing the time when they'll be called into the military (if they haven't already volunteered), their schooling is peppered with lectures from former alumni who have received the Iron Cross for their war service.
Mahlke, a boy/man with a vast Adam's apple that attracts attention to him as it bobs up and down (the mouse of the title), has spent years trying to disguise this physical trademark. When he surprises everyone by volunteering, his path to such a reward of his own is set.
The second part of the Danzig Trilogy – the first part being Grass's most famous book, the Nobel-cited Tin Drum – is, on the surface, a very simple tale by comparison with its predecessor.
But, like an iceberg – or the mostly-sunken minesweeper that dominates the story's landscape – there is much, much more to this brief (under 200 pages) tale.
It deals with the fight for acceptance – indeed, the desire, the need for group acceptance that, in Malkhe's case, drives what he does at school, amongst his peers, his teachers and later in the military.
Then there is patriotism – along with Malkhe's religiosity, Grass paints it as faith in a form of magic that promises rewards. For Malkhe, adhering to the patriotic faith is what he hopes will bring him fulfilment (salvation).
There are some complex things at work here. Pilenz, the narrator, frequently turns his dialogue into a direct address to Malkhe. Is this partly out of guilt for what happens (and what is that?) to his former friend? Is his apparent guilt a suggestion of the collective guilt that a society does/should feel about sending any of its young people to war?
Unlike some of Grass's other works – or perhaps, more importantly, unlike how Grass is sometimes viewed – Cat and Mouse is not an blaring anti-Nazi or anti-German polemic. Rather, it is a universal work that is written in such a way as to include rather than exclude readers from non-German backgrounds.
The ordinariness of the boys' interest in war – or at least, in the machinery of war (the ships etc) – is not unique to Nazi Germany.
The aspects of growing up that he describes, including relationships with peers and discovering sexuality, are also universal experiences.
Grass has a subtle dig at Nazi ideology in terms of the idea of 'pure manhood', but that also links with the role of religion in the story and Malkhe's obsession with the Madonna. The sexual play of the other boys is a healthy contrast to Malkhe's obsessions, and he alone is reluctant to indulge in their rather innocent masturbatory games. It could almost be a very early 1960s version of 'make love, not war'. Yet his obsession with, of all women, a virgin, is almost sexual in its intensity.
For Malkhe, even though he claims not to be convinced by religion, he adheres to and enjoys the forms, the rituals. Likewise, patriotism. In the context of Nazi Germany, it is a comment on how people so easily slipped into supporting (or being seen to support) something that they didn't really believe in.
But the idea that people support forms and rituals, without belief in what they mean, is also universal – and in a world where war continues to be prosecuted on spurious grounds, every bit as relevant.
As a little 'extra', for Grass buffs, there are two references to Oskar Matzerath, the beater of the Tin Drum, to spot, plus one to the Matzeraths' shop.
It is very, very good indeed.
