The Flounder by Günter Grass

First published:Der Butt, 1977 (English translation, 1978)

Type of work: Magical realism

Time of work: From the neolithic period to the late 1970’s

Locale: Germany and Poland

Principal Characters:

• The Narrator, a writer who has lived many lives throughout history
• Ilsebill, his wife
• The Flounder, the mythical fish who has advised men throughout history
• The nine Cooks, the women who have cooked for the narrator during his many lives

The Novel

The Flounder examines the issues inherent in the age-old war between the sexes. Written in the first person, the novel is a long chronicle in which every aspect of this war is examined by the author. Beginning with the neolithic period and proceeding through modern times, Günter Grass leaves no feminist issue unchallenged, no sexist stone unturned. Even the way in which the chapters are arranged (in nine monthly headings signifying the pregnancy of the narrator’s current wife, Ilsebill) indicates that the war has not abated, that it will continue long after the novel has finished.

The novel begins in the neolithic period, with the catching of a flounder by a primitive fisherman. This flatfish is no ordinary fish but a magical entity who teaches the primitive fisherman many things: how to count on his fingers, how to explore outside his local domain, and how to subjugate the womenfolk of his clan.

The neolithic fisherman, the reader is informed, is only one of the many lives of the narrator. In fact, by the end of the novel, this same narrator has passed through at least nine different periods of history under dozens of guises and occupations. Throughout this time, the Flounder remains his spiritual adviser, ready at any moment to be summoned from the sea for advice on how to run the world. This arrangement continues for centuries.

One day, in the late 1970’s, three feminists who are fishing in Lubeck Bay catch the Flounder—or rather, he allows himself to be caught. The fish, to their surprise, bluntly informs them that he is tired of serving men, that men have ruined the world. He now wants to help women run things. Women, he insists, are the only salvation of the world.

The feminists, instead of accepting his offer, decide that the Flounder should be tried as a criminal, a war criminal, for his many offenses against womankind. They drop him into a tank of seawater and ship him back to Berlin to stand trial before a tribunal of women.

The remainder of the book, its bulk, alternates between the many different lives of the narrator and the trial of the Flounder. The way in which the book moves between historical periods serves as a means of seeing both the past and the present. The narrator might talk about himself, for example, as a sword-smith in the Middle Ages and expound on what the relationship with his wife was like. Then he will invariably turn to the women’s tribunal to get the views of that time period. This device allows the narrator to view the historical differences and relationships between the sexes from a variety of perspectives.

The narrator proceeds in great detail, following each of his lives more or less in historical order but always returning to the tribunal to gain the women’s opinions. He also manages to balance his own views with those of whatever woman happens to be his cook at the time. Although seemingly a sexist label, “cook” is probably the most appropriate term for these women simply because that was the only thing they all had in common. Not all were wives, lovers, or even companions to the narrator. Yet all of them cooked for him.

The cooks vary greatly between historical periods. In the neolithic period, his cook is named Awa. She is ruler of the tribe, possessor of three breasts. This is a point in history when matriarchy is in the ascendancy, when men serve women in blissful ignorance. This is also the time when the Flounder enters the scene, advising the narrator on how to forge iron, make axes, and start war. Soon thereafter, Awa loses her third breast, and the matriarchy begins to crumble.

The cooks serve as links to the history of women. There is Metswina, who lives in the pagan Europe of the sixth century and is hanged for the murder of a dour Christian missionary. There is Fat Gret, a plump abbess in a medieval convent, who rules the town with her wit and cast-iron pot of soup. There is Dorothea, the narrator’s wife at the time of the Crusades, who indulges in acts of masochism in the name of Christ; it is her hope to be canonized eventually. There is Sophie, a Prussian cook who poisons five officers of Napoleon’s army because they were holding her betrothed in prison. Finally, there is Lena Stubbe, the wife of a Danzig dockyard worker; she invented the proletarian cookbook at the beginning of the twentieth century.

One by one, the narrator writes about his cooks, often devoting more space to their stories than to his own. His most important cook, however, is his late wife, Ilsebill. She is the woman carrying his child. Much of the narrative is an ongoing argument between Ilsebill and the narrator about the inherent differences between the sexes. This argument seems to have no end.

In the meantime, the woman’s tribunal is also examining the lives of these women, attempting to determine whether the Flounder is guilty of helping the male to oppress them. The cooks take affidavits, they submit documents, and they file motions. The Flounder makes long, rhetorical speeches about the differences between the sexes; the prosecutor objects to these speeches; and the defense lawyer objects to her objections. In the end, the trial becomes a media circus.

In the process, the group raises questions about fundamental issues such as domesticity, romantic love, strength, masculinity, and femininity. In addition it manages to make its own survey of history, as a counterpoint to the character-lives of the narrator. When the stories are all told and the closing arguments are made, the tribunal renders its verdict against the Flounder: guilty on all counts. The group sentences the guilty flatfish to a huge banquet held in front of him in which the main course is baked flounder. The tribunal eats the meal with relish and then, as a final gesture of contempt, throws the bare fish bones into the Flounder’s tank.

Eventually, despite an assassination attempt by a group of radical feminists, the Flounder is dumped back into the Baltic Sea by members of the tribunal, with his promise that he will serve womankind forever. He is, one might say, on parole.

The Characters

The narrative stance and characterization of this book are quite clever. By claiming to have passed through so many lives, the narrator can not only write in the first person but also maintain an omniscient viewpoint. He has seen history not through the eyes of God but through a number of different characters. He has the best of both narrative worlds. By virtue of having lived so many lives, the narrator can also take on a variety of personalities. He is a simpering, young boy in one life and a brutal wife-beating husband in another. He moves like a specter across the spectrum of possible personalities, becoming one type then transforming into another. He is never constricted by his characters, for they change with the era in which they live and with their station in life. Some are bishops, others fishermen. All are shaped by the circumstances of their lives. In this way, the narrator can be both himself and any other man he chooses.

Similarly, the female characters vary greatly. Some are kind. Others are cruel. Still others show elements of both qualities. Even though there are probably thirty different women in this book (the vast majority of characters are women), Grass manages to draw a distinct personality for each one. None, not even the most minor of characters, seems like an archetype. All have their quirks, foibles, and idiosyncrasies.

With so many characters, Grass is able to look at women in many different stations and personalities. By the same token, depicting so many different women precludes any one woman from becoming a major character. While there are those—Awa, Dorothea, Sophie, and Fat Gret—who have their stories told at length, none of them appears more than briefly over the whole span of the novel. For the many times her name is mentioned, there is little told about the narrator’s beloved Ilsebill. In the end, Ilsebill becomes little more than the person to whom the narrator is directing his long narrative.

In fact, apart from the narrator, the Flounder is the only major character who appears regularly throughout the novel. In contrast to the narrator, however, the character of the mythical flatfish does not change as the centuries pass. He simply stays what he has always been: a magical, pompous, and long-winded fish who often gives bad advice.

As a character, the Flounder is both human and godlike. He is capable of making mistakes as his service to the male species reveals. Yet he is capable of rectifying his mistakes. His advice to women and his magic will redeem him. In a sense, the mythical flatfish (first made famous by the Brothers Grimm) is the perfect symbol for the war between the sexes. Neither man nor woman, he is neutral in the struggle but is slippery enough to take sides.

Critical Context

The Flounder is Grass’s most important work, and it represents a new height in the literature of postwar Germany. Two of Grass’s other novels, Die Blechtrommel (1959; The Tin Drum, 1961) and Hundejahre (1963; Dog Years, 1965) were successful literary endeavors in a Germany that had focused its view on World War II. Both are written in a style which straddles realism and fantasy, and both deal with the war. The Flounder, however, was written in the late 1970’s and broke this fixation on World War II. This novel took on an even older war, the war between the sexes. Observing the growing feminist movement in Germany, Grass sought to grapple with the fundamental issues facing both genders. He was not content, however, to view these issues with the myopia common to most of his contemporaries. Instead, he wanted to go back to the root of the struggle, back to the dawn of history.

With this in mind, he delved into the history of his native northern Germany to show both the male and female perspectives through specific characters. This undertaking, to retell history through characters without rendering them mere archetypes, would be too ambitious for most writers. For Grass, it was clearly a success.

Bibliography

Hayman, Ronald. Günter Grass, 1985.

Hunt, Irmgard Elsner. Mutter und Muttermythose in Günter Grass’ Roman “Der Butt,” 1983.

Keele, Alan Frank. Understanding Günter Grass, 1987.

Mews, Siegfried. “The Fisherman and His Wife”: Günter Grass’s “The Flounder” in Critical Perspective, 1983.

Pickar, Gertrud Bauer. Adventures of a Flounder: Critical Essays on Günter Grass’s “Der Butt,” 1982.