Günter Grass's Die Blechtrommel may be read as a novel which proclaims the death of Faust as a hero in literature by showing the degeneration of the Faustian ethos. Such an interpretation is based on Grass's point of view and style in the novel, on the life of Oskar Matzerath and, most significantly, on the novel itself as a social document.

Grass's point of view remains largely consistent in that everything is seen from the obverse side, from the perspective of insanity, and from below. (pp. 174-75)

Grass's tale is … told from "below", from the perspective of a midget looking at giants, of a child looking at adults. This point of view is the Froschperspektive…. The saint seated on a pillar sees everything from above with an Olympian—one is tempted to say Goethean—detachment. Oskar, like a frog, is small enough to hide where others cannot...