Using their unique narrative perspective allows Grass to tell a story, to comment on the period of the second World War in Germany, and to express concern for Germany's future. The children of Grass's trilogy perceive that such adults could not be trusted and so they rejected the adult world and took comfort and refuge in immaturity. For instance, brown-shirts are authority figures and, instead of serving as sources of knowledge, teachers indoctrinated children in the Nazi Party line. They have a special affinity for the grotesque and the bizarre, not surprising when one considers the world in which they were growing up. Like all young people, they are at once curious, imaginative, unreliable, and naive. Youngsters in these books function as narrators, protagonists, and audience, and provide both theme and structure to Grass's writing. In this paper I explore the collective functions of children and adolescents in Glinter Grass's Danzig Trilogy, The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, and Dog Years.
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