Anna Bronski hides a fleeing arsonist named Joseph Koljaiczek under her skirts; he impregnates her and they marry.

Agnes is born to Anna and Joseph; Joseph later disappears while fleeing police and is presumed dead under a raft.

Agnes nurses an injured soldier named Alfred back to health and eventually marries him despite her love for cousin Jan.

Oskar is born with a fully developed adult mind; Agnes's promise of a tin drum convinces him not to retreat back into the womb.

Oskar throws himself down the basement stairs to provide a false explanation for why he stops growing at age three.

Oskar discovers he can shatter glass with his high-pitched scream when Alfred tries to take away his tin drum.

Agnes begins obsessively eating fish following a traumatic beach trip and dies of fish poisoning.

German soldiers attack the Polish Post Office, trapping Jan and Oskar inside while postal workers desperately defend the building.

Oskar points out Jan to German soldiers; Jan is taken away and executed by firing squad.

Alfred hires Maria Truczinski; Oskar sexually assaults Maria and becomes convinced that he, not Alfred, has fathered her child Kurt.

Oskar joins Bebra's traveling performance group and performs for German soldiers at the front lines.

Roswitha is killed by a bomb in Normandy after she steps off the truck to fetch a cup of coffee.

Russian soldiers invade Danzig; Oskar hands Alfred an open Nazi pin, which Alfred swallows and chokes on before being shot.

At Alfred's funeral, Oskar throws his tin drum into the grave and immediately begins to grow for the first time.

Oskar is arrested on a train in France, convicted of murder, and confined to the psychiatric hospital where he writes his memoir.

Pool 1 traces the major turning points in Oskar's life, beginning with his grandparents' fateful meeting in a potato field and ending with his deliberate confinement in a psychiatric hospital. It follows the key milestones that define his unusual existence: his birth with a fully developed adult mind, his decision to stop growing, his discovery of his glass-shattering voice, and the deaths of every person closest to him. The pool covers the central political backdrop of Oskar's story — the German invasion of Poland, the fall of Danzig, and the brutal arrival of Soviet forces — as these events destroy his family one by one. From Agnes's death by fish poisoning to Jan's execution at Saspe, from Alfred's death by a swallowed Nazi pin to the transformative moment at Alfred's graveside, these are the headline events that drive the narrative forward. Each event marks a significant shift in Oskar's relationship to the world around him, charting his arc from willful, self-contained child to guilt-ridden, famous adult. The pool concludes with Oskar's final act of self-imposed punishment, engineered on a train platform in France.

The essential events of Oskar Matzerath's extraordinary life, from birth to asylum.

Agnes marries Alfred while secretly continuing her love affair with her cousin Jan Bronski.

Oskar's teacher tries to take his tin drum during class; his retaliatory scream shatters her spectacles and he is expelled.

Frau Greff teaches Oskar to read by reading aloud from a salacious book about Rasputin, certain Oskar cannot understand a word.

From the top of the Stockturn tower, Oskar uses his voice to shatter the windows of the Stadt-Theater far below.

Sigismund Markus begs Agnes to leave Jan and flee Danzig before the Germans arrive, but Agnes refuses.

Oskar hides beneath a grandstand at a Nazi rally and plays his tin drum, turning the military march into a dance party.

The family visits the beach on Good Friday; Agnes watches a man pull writhing eels from a severed horse's head and vomits.

Sigismund Markus attends Agnes's funeral but other mourners attempt to have the Jewish toyshop owner removed from the cemetery.

Herbert Truczinski is found dead at the maritime museum after trying to climb onto the cursed wooden figurehead Niobe.

Meyn kills his four cats in a grief-stricken rage after Herbert's funeral and is stripped of his Nazi SA position as a result.

During the battle for the Post Office, Jan and Viktor play skat with the dying janitor Kobyella until he finally expires mid-game.

Oskar and Maria develop an intimate ritual around sharing packets of fizz powder, which produces a physical awakening in Maria.

Oskar pushes Maria off a ladder and later attempts to stab her with scissors in separate efforts to end her pregnancy.

The Dusters gang is arrested after placing Oskar on the lap of the church's Mary statue in a mock nativity scene.

Maria takes Oskar and Kurt to Dusseldorf; Oskar finds work as an apprentice stonecutter under a craftsman named Korneff.

Pool 2 fills in the rich tapestry of Oskar's Danzig, covering the significant secondary events that shaped his early life and the lives of those around him. It follows Oskar's unconventional education — through Frau Greff's Rasputin readings and a teacher's shattered spectacles — as well as his early experiments with his devastating voice, from the Stockturn tower to the grandstand at a Nazi rally. The pool traces the tragic arcs of the people Oskar knew most intimately, including Herbert Truczinski's obsessive death at the maritime museum and Meyn's grief-fueled violence against his cats on Kristallnacht's eve. The tense events inside the Polish Post Office are seen through the lens of the skat game Jan plays with the dying janitor Kobyella, while Maria's story unfolds through the intimate fizz powder ritual and Oskar's violent attempts to end her pregnancy. The pool concludes with the Dusters' arrest in the Catholic church and the family's difficult relocation to post-war Dusseldorf, where Oskar begins again as an apprentice stonecutter.

The supporting events and neighborhood stories that give Oskar's Danzig its texture and tragedy.

Oskar overhears Alfred planning his future as a grocer and resolves to stop growing at age three to resist this fate.

Jan Bronski reaffirms his Polish identity by taking a job at the Polish Post Office while Alfred rises through the Nazi Party.

Young Oskar meets the circus dwarf Bebra, who warns that people of their height must manipulate others or be crushed by them.

Oskar cuts a hole in a jewelry store window; Jan steals a golden necklace through it to give to Agnes.

Oskar challenges a Jesus statue in church to play his tin drum as proof of God; no miracle occurs and he remains faithless.

Alfred takes Oskar into the city on Kristallnacht; Oskar finds Sigismund Markus dead by suicide in his looted toy store.

Crazy Leo silently leads Oskar to Jan's execution site at Saspe; Oskar later tells his grandmother Anna where Jan is buried.

Oskar discovers Alfred and Maria having sex in the kitchen; Alfred marries Maria and raises Kurt publicly as his own son.

Frau Greff takes Oskar as a lover while her husband, reported for pedophilia, hangs himself using one of his mechanical drum contraptions.

Oskar returns to the same Catholic church where the Jesus statue now plays his tin drum; Oskar still refuses to believe and flees.

A gang of young people called the Dusters witnesses Oskar shattering windows across Danzig and recruits him as their new leader.

Bebra confronts Oskar with a full catalog of his sins and guilt; Oskar weeps, confesses, and signs a recording contract.

Oskar takes the nurse Sister Gertrud on a date; she abandons him mid-evening on the dance floor and never returns to their table.

Oskar and Lankes revisit the Normandy beach; Lankes seduces a nun inside the same bunker where he once shot nuns during the war.

Oskar convinces Vittlar to report a severed ringed finger to the police, then flees to France to make the accusation more credible.

Pool 3 focuses on the revelations and turning points that expose Oskar's inner life, beginning with the formative decision to stop growing and ending with his deliberate manipulation of Vittlar into reporting him to the police. These events reveal the moral complexity beneath Oskar's unusual surface: a theft engineered through a shop window, a failed church miracle that cements his faithlessness, and the discovery of Alfred and Maria's affair that poisons his understanding of love. The pool traces Oskar's complicated relationship with guilt and complicity, from witnessing Kristallnacht and Markus's suicide to learning where Jan was buried and delivering the truth to Anna. It follows his post-war journey through failed romantic encounters, an uncomfortable return to the beaches of Normandy, and a tearful confession extracted by an aging Bebra. Together, these events illuminate the moral reckoning that defines Oskar's entire life and drives his desperate, self-constructed need for judgment and punishment.

The key decisions, discoveries, and moral crises that define Oskar's inner transformation.