Narratives of resistance and resisting narrative in Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Abdelkader Benali’s The Long Awaited

1. Ethics of Storytelling Conference
University of Turku
A Family of Tragic Picaroons
sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com 4 June 2015

2. TYPOLOGY OF GENRES FOR LIFE STORIES
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sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/
Based on Bakhtin 1986,
adapted from Moenandar
& Huisman 2015

3. o Günter Grass, Die
Blechtrommel (1959)
o Salman Rushdie,
Midnight’s Children
(1981)
o Abdelkader Benali, De
langverwachte [The Long
awaited] (2002)
• Fit the tradition of the
picaresque
• Add something to this
tradition
NARRATIVES OF TRANSITION
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sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/

4. “Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never
lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the
shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.“
Die Blechtrommel
“I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no
getting away from the date. I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on
August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No,
it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.”
Midnight’s Children
“I have a special gift. So, now I’ve said it. They’re waiting for me, just before the
start of the new year, but I am going to postpone my birth for a while.”
De langverwachte
FIRST SENTENCES
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5. o Picaresque perspective
• Deconstructs grand narratives
• Fitting for a story about
transition
o But adds something
(Reddick, 1975):
• Oskar is picaroon and victim
• Outsider and a desire to
belong
o Hybride genre:
picaresque/Bildungsroman
THE TIN DRUM
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6. o Saleem Sinaï is like Oskar
(cf. Merivale, 1994)
o Talk themselves into the
world through power
over plot (muthos -
Ricoeur, 1984)
o Addition: Omniscience
• Strengthens encyclopedic
character
• Metafictional comment on
muthos
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN
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sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/

7. o The Long Awaited is like
Saleem Sinai and Oskar
Matzerath
o Addition: removing the
narrator from the story
o Long Awaited is pure muthos
o Suffering relegated to main
character
o Messianist overtones become
stronger
o Oskar Matzerath and Saleem
Sinai dissolve in history
o The Long Awaited solves history
THE LONG AWAITED
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sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/

8. o Narrative resistance, resisting narrative
• Oscillating between picaresque outsiderness
and need for belonging
• Foregrounding narrative process and its
oppressive nature through unnatural narrative
CONCLUSION
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sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/

9. Questions?
Works cited:
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (1986).
• Merivale, Patricia. “Saleem Fathered by Oskar. Intertextual Strategies in
Midnight’s Children and The Tin Drum” (1994).
• Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen & Huisman, Krina. “Storytelling as a Tool for
Student Career Counselling” (2015).
• Reddick, John. The ‘Danzig Trilogy’ of Günter Grass (1975).
• Ricoeur, Paul. Temps et récit 1 (1983).
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
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sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/SJMoenandar/