Cat and Mouse - Günter Grass

[Gail]

Gunter Grass’s Cat and Mouse is a novella that manages to capture the horrible anxiety and alienation of growing up during the WWII in Danzig (free state then but now part of Poland) while hardly even mentioning Hitler or the Nazi or even the horrors of the war. The narrator of the story is a writer attempting to capture in written words, some of his thoughts and emotions regarding a childhood buddy and his buddy’s ultimate fate which haunts him into his adulthood. We are told that the narrator’s profession as a social worker was in some way determined by his interactions with Joachim Mahlke, the key character of the story. Some times the narrator/writer speaks to the reader and some times he is speaking directly to Joachim using the pronoun you...you were the one....
Joachim is an odd duck with an outsized adam’s apple and sexual organs who frequently has odd reactions to the commonplace. He learns to swim late in life but becomes better than any of the other boys. He worships the Virgin Mary without really believing in the Catholic religion. He is tarnished in his school because of a single provocative act and he goes on to be a sergeant with an incredible record in the war.
The relationship between our writer/narrator, and Joachim is not one of faithful loyalty but more of a quiet obsession. The writer, as a boy wanted to be with him and to be seen with him and to even understand him but he is never truly his friend.
The war comes in as something that causes the boys to memorize all the various class of war ships. It has also killed the writer’s brother, caused his mother to entertain men who are not his father, and looms large on the horizon as they procrastinate about going into the navy or the army (they know they will be drafted).
What makes this novella so strange and wonderful is the way it is written. I did not care for any of the characters, the plot is of minor construction and yet I really felt the cat and mouse game of our characters being caught up in a life that has few personal choices and many horrors. The mice, our characters, attempt to escape, but they are caught in the game in which the best they can do is maneuver around the cat. They can never eliminate the cat; their fate.
I rated this 3 stars for having such unlikeable characters and little plot. Then 5 stars for incredibly writing. Then down to 4. However, I loved the writing....How did he manage to capture such taunt anxiety while not talking about it.

[Kristel]

Read for 1001, BOTM October 2019. This is the second book in the Danzig Trilogy but other than a couple of cameo appearance of the little drummer, it is not necessary to have read The Tin Drum first in my opinion. I enjoyed this one so much more than the first book. The story is about The Great Mahlke as he is eventually labeled by his adolescent peer. Mahlke is an awkward youth with an enormously large Adam's apple. The story opens with the description of a cat pouncing on Mahlke's Adam apple. The story is told by an unreliable, unnamed narrator, until the 8th chapter when we finally are given the name Pilenz. The boys spend their days swimming out to a sunken boat and sit on the ships bridge which rises a little above water and represents the destructiveness of war. The title, Cat and Mouse, can be taken as a metaphor of war, society, and victim or it can be a description of the relationship of our narrator (the observer) and Mahlke the performer. Is Pilenz the cat who stalks Mahlke, the mouse. Is Pilenz writing a confession or is this a game of Cat and Mouse?

The story is a coming of age story of adolescent boys at a time where they are facing war after they are no longer school boys. There is some crudity and sexual themes but then, isn't adolescent boys full of crudity and sexual talk? A story of boyhood and adolescence in WWII Danzig.

Symbols and motifs abound. The Adam's apple and the objects that are hung around his neck; screwdriver, virgin Mary necklace, pom poms, mufflers, Iron Cross.

The atmosphere is one of impending crisis. The reader is drawn along, knowing no good will be the conclusion to the study of Mahlke by this Pilenz.

Rating 3.5, but I liked it more than 3 so rounding it to 4.

[Diane]

Rating: 3.5 stars

A coming of age novella set during WWII, it tells the story of two boys from the one's perspective through reflections into the past. The narrator tells his story in an effort to assuage his guilt about the treatment of the other boy.

This is the second book in the Danzig trilogy, but as far as I can tell, it is not necessary to read the books in order, as characters across books don't seem to play a significant role in the other novels. Heavy on symbolism, it is a book that makes you ponder long after reading it.