Local Anaesthetic
A forty-year-old Berlin schoolmaster passes the whole book in a dentist's chair, jaw frozen, watching the television set mounted in front of him and arguing with the dentist about pain, prophylaxis and reform. His best pupil intends to burn a dachshund on the Kurfürstendamm so that cake-eating Berliners will finally understand napalm, and the teacher has to talk him out of it. Grass's most direct engagement with the West German protest years.
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Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 51% · 13 shared
- 48% · 13 shared
- 47% · 9 shared
- 46% · 12 shared
- 46% · 12 shared
- 46% · 12 shared