"Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas"

In this quote, Gunther Grass insists that moody is no more an individual experience or separated incident. Instead, it has come to be an extensive frame of mind enjoyed by the working-class. The moody that afflicts the wage earner is attributed to the stress of meeting production quotas, which is a considerable facet of modern commercial work. Moreover, the text recommends that this frame of mind has impacted a large variety of individuals, which is why moody has actually ended up being a class benefit. In essence, the quote highlights the effect of the modern industrial society on the working-class, which has actually resulted in prevalent moody as a kind of existential crisis.