What happens in Chapter 20 of The Tin Drum?
Chapter 20, "The Trial," takes us to a mental institution in Düsseldorf, where Oskar Matzerath is being held as authorities investigate his supposed involvement in Sister Dorothea's death, a nurse whose murder has led them to his bedside. The inquiry unfolds in a bizarre, bureaucratic fashion: lawyers, doctors, and officials shuffle in and out of Oskar's stark white room, each adhering to their roles with a mix of seriousness and incompetence. From his hospital bed, Oskar narrates with his typical detachment, explaining how the evidence against him feels both overwhelming and devoid of real meaning—his drum, his past, and his dwarfism become parts of a case that no one fully grasps. His friend and lawyer, Dr. Döbscher, struggles through the mountains of paperwork while Oskar observes with the wry amusement of someone who has long recognized that concepts of guilt and innocence are merely constructs of those who never had to navigate the complexities of the twentieth century. The chapter concludes with the trial in limbo, trapped in the same bureaucratic stasis that has ensnared so many of Oskar's misdeeds and coincidences.
Analysis
Grass uses the trial as a sustained satirical tool, reflecting the postwar West German legal system back at the society it claims to judge. The chapter's key craft move is Oskar's ironic dual role: he's both the accused and the clearest observer present. Grass achieves this by keeping Oskar's writing cool and systematic, even as the emotional stakes rise. The white walls of the institution appear repeatedly, as they do throughout the novel, representing not innocence but erasure—a blank canvas for guilt that gets projected and then scrubbed away by bureaucratic procedures.
Grass also taps into the picaresque tradition: Oskar is a rogue who navigates every institution precisely because he rejects its logic from within. The legal proceedings turn into another performance, with Oskar—the ever-present drummer and manipulator of glass and crowd—watching it all through a detached, theatrical lens. The tone subtly shifts from black comedy to something more chilling when Oskar thinks about Sister Dorothea; here, the drum falls silent, creating a structural absence that reveals real discomfort beneath the irony.
Additionally, the chapter deepens the novel's exploration of testimony and memory: Oskar's narration acts as a kind of trial, implicating the reader as a juror, preventing any easy conclusions. The bureaucratic language of the proceedings seeps into Oskar's own style, implying that no voice can escape the systems it critiques.
Key quotes from Chapter 20
“I am the patient; I am also the accused; and I suspect that I am, in some sense, the only witness worth consulting.”
Oskar reflects on his triple role as the formal inquiry opens, collapsing the distinctions between madness, criminality, and truth-telling.
“They brought my drum as evidence. It lay on the table between the documents and said nothing, which was, I thought, the wisest thing it had ever done.”
The drum—Oskar's lifelong instrument of agency and destruction—appears as a mute exhibit, its silence inverting its usual narrative power.
“Guilt, like a suit of clothes, fits best those who have had it tailored for them in advance.”
Oskar's sardonic aphorism surfaces mid-trial as he watches the lawyers arrange their predetermined conclusions around the available facts.
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- Officially sent by legal or medical authority to live in a psychiatric institution, typically because a person is judged to be mentally ill or dangerous.