The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, as he searches for a stolen South American fetish, identifiable by its broken right ear, and deals with other thieves who are after it.

Commentators have praised the book for showcasing Hergé's then-newfound commitment to a clear narrative structure and strives for historical and technical accuracy, but believe that its use of humour comparable to earlier Adventures renders it inferior to the previous volume, The Blue Lotus.

Balthazar's parrot – the only witness to the murder – is obtained by two Hispanic men, Alonso and Ramón, who try to kill Tintin when he begins to investigate their connection to the crime.

[1] From the parrot, Alonso and Ramón discover Balthazar's murderer is Rodrigo Tortilla, and they proceed to follow him aboard a ship bound for South America.

[5] At the check-in counter, Tintin and Snowy were due to leave South America for Europe but missed the ferry crossing as they had to wait for another week.

As the war between San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico ends when Gran Chapo is discovered to have no oil, Tintin returns to Belgium after a brief encounter with Alonso and Ramón.

[16] Hergé had learned about the conflict and the western corporations profiting from it through two issues of anti-conformist French magazine Le Crapouillot (The Mortar Shell), which covered news stories ignored by the mainstream media.

[23] As noted by Hergé biographer Harry Thompson, The Broken Ear is the first story in the Tintin series to "start and finish in home surroundings"[24] and the first to deal with the pursuit of a MacGuffin.

[24] This upset the editors of Cœurs Vaillants, who asked Hergé to change the scene; annoyed at their request, he later commented: "On the surface it cost me nothing, but that kind of addition was really difficult for me".

[33] He also re-used other elements pioneered in The Broken Ear in his later Adventures: a parrot in The Castafiore Emerald, a ravine crash in The Calculus Affair, a fireball and vivid dream in The Seven Crystal Balls, and a firing squad in Tintin and the Picaros.

As part of this, they included artefacts that featured in the series, with the broken-eared Peruvian statue that inspired Hergé's Arumbaya fetish as the centre piece of the show; however, they feared that it might be stolen, so a replica was exhibited rather than the genuine article.

[31] Harry Thompson felt that The Broken Ear had a "slightly lacklustre quality" to it,[19] and was "disappointing" due to the fact that the "various elements don't gel well together".

"[38] Michael Farr described The Broken Ear as a "moral condemnation of capitalism, imperialism and war", although felt that it was "not as perfectly constructed" as The Blue Lotus, being "less detailed and realistic".

[43] He thought that it served as a "perfect metaphor" for the theories of German philosopher Walter Benjamin published in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), which Hergé had not read.

[44] Literary critic Tom McCarthy thought that Balthazar was an example of the interesting minor characters that imbue the Adventures, commenting that his "down-at-heel garret speaks volumes of loneliness and semi-realised artistry".

[48] Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès of Stanford University believed that The Broken Ear established a "tintinian" anthropology that would remain throughout the rest of the series.

As part of this, Apostolidès argued, Hergé distances himself from western values and looks at his own society as an outsider, accomplishing what Roger Caillois called "sociological revolution".

[48] He felt that the comic was "more contrived" and "more superficial" than the previous Adventures, and that here Tintin loses his position as "the sole point of identification" for the reader, with the other characters becoming more identifiable.

[49] Apostolidès also argued that in the comic, Alcazar was a religious figure, who attained a "sacred" quality through the spilling of blood in his revolt against General Tapioca's government.

The passage containing Tintin's drunkenness has been ignored entirely, keeping the character consistent with how it is seen in the rest of series - upright, conscientious and of commendable moral standards.

Pérez and Bada do not die at the end of the story, as occurs in the album, but are rescued by Tintin as he is retrieved from the sea by the ship's crew, and taken to prison.

[53] Like The Broken Ear, Men in Space concerns an artist hired to reproduce a priceless artwork; however he ultimately produces more than one copy, fooling the conspirators.