In The Tin Drum, Oskar's drum represents the protest of childhood against the corruption and violence of the adult world.

Throughout some of the most turbulent events of the twentieth century, Oskar remains a child and clings to a child's toy as his main means of expressing and asserting himself. He first decides that he would prefer to stay a child when he hears his father's future plans, which involve Oskar doing nothing more than owning a grocery store. Although this is merely dull in comparison with the horrors that he is to meet in his perpetual childhood, he decides at this point that he will not participate in the adult world, and his drumming will be his protest against it.

Oskar is the quintessential unreliable narrator. He is telling his story from the asylum where he has been confined, and the reader cannot be sure that anything he says is true. Add to this the magic realism and symbolism of the narrative, and it does not appear that Grass is trying to suggest that it is possible or realistic for Oskar's drum to have had the effect he describes.