[2] The narrator in Book One, the mine owner Brauxel,[3] tells of the friendship of Walter and Eduard when they are children in the Vistula estuary, which is a German-Polish borderland (the interwar Free City of Danzig) peopled by Mennonites, Catholics and Protestants.

[3] This part of the story occurs during the war period, when Amsel collects vast numbers of S.A. uniforms, and dresses his scarecrows in them.

[2] Grass's style frequently parodies Martin Heidegger's arcane philosophical syntax in Being and Time, which one of the teenage protagonists likes to poke fun at.

The seemingly solid childhood friendship of Amsel and Matern evolves into the love-hate relationship between Jew and non-Jew under the impact of Nazi ideology.

When the former friends from the region of the Vistula Delta finally meet again in the West, the ominous Alsatian dog (German Shepherd) that followed Matern on his odyssey is left behind in Brauxel's subterranean world of scarecrows.