Journal of Architectural Education

Oskar, the main character of Günter Grass’s 1958 novel, The Tin Drum, is a shrieking child anarchist who deliberately stops his biological growth at the age of three. He is observant and impetuous, sneering at the behavior of adults around him. The boy Oskar also makes an appearance in population ecology, where he is used as a namesake term for trees that “prefer the juvenile to the adult state.” These nonhuman Oskars occupy the understory of a mature forest, where seeds have germinated and grown up into shade-tolerant saplings, but persist as “ageing juveniles, lingering in a stunted condition” for decades.