Table of contentsIntroductionBook reviewReferencesIntroductionE.TA Hoffmann never reveals the true nature of his protagonist Nathanael's childhood incident and therefore creates, by design, a ambiguity within The Sandman. This ambiguity leads to two possible interpretations of the story, one of reality and the other of fantasy. Neither interpretation dominates the story, nor are they intended to do so. However, Hoffman uses both interpretations of The Sandman to criticize the Romantics and Enlightenmentists; that is, each interpretation serves to reflect the two major movements that dominated Hoffmann's era. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essayErnst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776-1822), better known as Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, was a German romantic author and a pioneer of the fantastic genre of fiction. Drawing inspiration from "English Gothic romance, 18th-century Italian comedy, the psychology of the abnormal and the occult, he created both a world in which everyday life is imbued with the supernatural" and created characters that are placed in this tangible, real world. world yet strangely unknown (“Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann”). Book ReviewPublished in 1816, The Sandman embodies all of these aforementioned characteristics; the story features the juxtaposition of fantasy and reality, the grotesque, the strange, hallucinatory characters, and the horror beneath the surface of everyday life. In writing The Sandman, Hoffmann essentially reflects these elements to create a sense of ambiguity, leave the reader uncertain of the reality or fantasy of the story, and offers his commentary on Romanticism and the Enlightenment. The ambiguity in The Sandman is based on Nathanael's traumatic childhood. episode with the manifestation of the fictional sandman in a man named Coppelius. Until the end of the story, it remains unclear whether the experience is real or just a dream, whether the Sandman and his reincarnation exist or whether it is just a post-traumatic hallucination. In other words, Nathanael is either a sane protagonist who the reader can trust to find an objective view of reality, or Nathanael is a madman whose obsession only gives the reader a subjective and distorted view of reality . Hoffmann consciously leaves room for both interpretations in the story, and the reader is torn between reality and fantasy. The two interpretations are as follows: The first possible interpretation of the story arises from Nathanael's letter to Lothair. This interpretation is the fantastical explanation of the story, and it is well understood that Nathanael's experience with the Sandman is real. Nathanaël discovered the sandman at a young age and every night he heard “something slow and heavy coming up the stairs, he trembled in agony and alarm” (Hoffmann, p. 3). At first, the Sandman simply “leads Nathanaël and his brothers and sisters.” far from dad”, and creates a certain imaginary fear in the young boy. However, one night, Nathanaël heard the nurse's story: "The sandman is a bad man who comes to children when they do not want to go to bed and throws a handful of sand in their eyes, so that they start to bleed from the head. He puts their eyes in a bag and carries them up to the crescent moon to feed his own children, sitting in the nest up there. They have crooked beaks like owls so they can catch the eyes of naughty human children. » At this point, the sandman becomes somethingsomething more than a simple folkloric bogeyman and transcends all the fear that Nathanaël previously attributed to the sandman. Although Nathanael becomes old enough to reject the folklore over the years, the Sandman remains a frightening specter and an object of his obsession. Nathanael explains that the Sandman "initiated him to thoughts of wonders and wonders which took possession of his childish mind", a clear indication that the Sandman made a permanent impression on Nathanael. One night, Nathanaël decides to confront the sandman. Until Nathanael confronts the Sandman, the frightening obsession is just a faceless character. When Nathanaël finally identifies the sandman as the old lawyer Coppelius, whom Nathanaël knows well, the sandman does not die, but on the contrary manifests himself on Coppelius. Nathanael describes Coppelius as "a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a disproportionately large head, a face of yellow ocher color, a pair of bushy gray eyebrows, green cat's eyes sparkling with the most penetrating brilliance, and a large nose curved towards the front. his upper lip. The sandman takes shape, literally, he is no longer the bogie from the nurse's tale, but a spectral monster, and Coppelius is the new sandman. Now that the Sandman embodies a real, physical form, he is also capable of causing real, physical damage. Coppélius then attacks Nathanael, rendering the young boy unconscious, and a year later, during the final encounter, he murders Nathanael's father. Coppélius is not heard from again. This traumatic episode with the Sandman not only leaves a permanent scar on Nathanaël's mind, but also sees the death of his father. Although the Sandman disappears with Coppelius, Nathanael struggles with post-traumatic stress throughout his life and the Sandman, who is now a physical entity, never truly dies. We don't hear anything more about the Sandman until a barometer dealer named Giuseppe Coppola appears in Nathanael's house. Now an adult, Nathanael identifies many of Coppelius' dark and horrific characteristics in Coppola and believes that Coppelius disguised as Coppola is the returning Sandman. Indeed, the sandman never died, he simply disappeared. Nathanael explains that "the barometer seller is the accursed Coppelius himself, he is dressed differently, but the silhouette and features of Coppelius are too deeply imprinted on my mind for a mistake of this kind." Nathanael sincerely believes that Coppelius is Coppola, specifically citing the fact that Coppelius did not sufficiently change his name, from Coppelius to Coppola, does not constitute a significant difference. If the argument follows, it can also be argued that Coppelius/Coppola, who is German, can easily fake his disguised Italian accent, use his new profession as an excuse to return, etc. Ultimately, in this interpretation of the story, the Sandman is real and the dark, unexplained forces controlling Nathanael exist. Of course, if Nathanael is mentally disturbed as his obsession and fear of the Sandman suggests, there is an alternative interpretation. The second possible interpretation of the story arises from the letter sent by Clara to Nathanaël. This interpretation is the realistic explanation of the story that rejects the Sandman and all his manifestations with facts and logic. Clara explains that at the beginning she herself was touched by Nathanaël's fear; “The fatal barometer merchant followed me at every step... he disturbed my healthy and usually peaceful sleep with all kinds of visionshorrible…yet the next day I was completely changed again.” Clara clearly demonstrates that although fear exists, it is not real. In other words, the fear of the Sandman is imaginary. Clara explains this to Nathanaël: “All the terrible things you talk about happened simply in your own mind and have little to do with the real world. Coppélius may have been quite loathsome, but it was his hatred of children that really caused the horror you felt towards him. In her letter, Clara essentially argues that Nathanael's fear is a psychological element, where young Nathanael unconsciously created a link between a man he abhorred and a folkloric character he feared. For Nathanael, Coppelius and the Sandman are indistinguishable. Clara concludes by telling Nathanael that all of his dark, hostile fears about the Sandman only exist because his belief in them brings them to life. Clara also provides Nathanael with factual proof that his childhood experience, although traumatic, was merely a misunderstanding and accident between two experimental alchemists. There were certain psychological consequences on young Nathanaël, but nothing that could not be explained by facts. Clara notes that Nathanael's father and Coppelius engaged in certain secret alchemical experiments, dangerous and unpredictable in nature. By participating in such experiments, Nathanael's father essentially brought about his own death. To reassure Nathanaël, Clara quotes her neighbor, the apothecary, and explains that sudden and deadly explosions are possible and common, as is typical of alchemy, and that through a careless mistake, Nathanaël's father been the victim of an unfortunate incident, not Coppélius. The reason Coppélius escaped was not, according to the same argument, because he had murdered his associate, but simply to avoid legal repercussions. This interpretation of history ultimately places reality above fantasy. In fact, Clara is able to erase all the fantastical elements of Nathanaël's letter with factual and logical evidence. Again, neither interpretation prevails, and that is intentional. The reader is meant to read the story with two possible understandings, each designed to reflect on the two major movements in Hoffmann's life, Romanticism and the Enlightenment. The fantastic interpretation of The Sandman parallels German Romanticism. During ETA Hoffmann's time, German Romanticism was best understood as a vision of an ideal world. In fact, German Romantic writers rejected their everyday world and instead sought an idyllic past. In Germany this past was synonymous with the medieval world, which was never what the Germans wanted it to be, and so it led to a world of fairy tales and dreams, a world of splendor. Romanticism has since been recognized as a philosophy of history. imagination, where emotion is elevated above reason and the ideal above reality, and where the ordinary and the prosaic are imbued with the extraordinary and the incomprehensible. But German romanticism did more than celebrate the existence of the supernatural; he particularly saw the world and men through a dark lens and viewed man as the victim of supernatural, hostile and unpredictable forces. German Romantic writers and Hoffmann in particular essentially combined these Romantic characteristics with concepts like the uncanny and the grotesque to create something supernatural and imaginary, yet dark and hostile (Mahlendorf). The strange and the grotesque are two of Hoffmann's most important romantic elements and are directly linked tothe fantastic interpretation of The Sandman. Uncanny is an experience where something is both familiar and foreign, or where something is hidden and then exposed, which almost always creates a feeling of weird and strange (Steig). The strangeness is largely evident when young Nathanael first identifies the Sandman as old Coppélius. In this case, Coppélius is both familiar, having visited Nathanael in the past, and simultaneously foreign, becoming the physical manifestation of the Sandman. This is also true when Nathanaël sees a disguised Coppelius at the barometer merchant's. On the one hand, Coppola is an unknown, but on the other, he is strangely familiar and reminiscent. The sandman, however, is not the only actor of strangeness; Olympia is actually thought to be the other source of this strange effect. Olympia is hidden for much of her early mentions and only revealed later in the story, presumably to hide her abominable existence from the public eye. Olympia, who is ultimately an automaton, first appears as a silent and immobile, but living daughter of Professor Spalanzani. His mechanical clock passing for real and his robotic existence for life is a combination of the familiar and the foreign, or appearance and illusion, which combine to create the strange. In fact, the ease with which Hoffmann is able to merge and juxtapose the familiar with the foreign not only explains much of the horror and strangeness that lies beneath the surface, but also demonstrates that the world of fantasy and the supernatural is an essential dimension of daily life. erases the boundary separating the human and animal kingdom and, in doing so, reduces man to a puppet or victim of the dark and hostile forces of the supernatural. Through personification, the grotesque also expands its scope to encompass mechanics and robotics, which take on menacing or abominable lives of their own as is the case with Olympia. In The Sandman, the grotesque is given a reality that contradicts known reality and at the same time, it becomes a true reality, a higher reality, or perhaps even the one and only reality. It is when fantasy and imagination become physical and the grotesque reveals the true absurdity of the world (Steig). Olympia is just an imagination of its creators and it becomes real. For Nathanaël, she is alive and even becomes more of a reality than Clara, whom Nathanaël describes at one point as an automaton. The doll transcends all reality and Clara herself, yet Olympia is only a doll. The grotesque creates a chaotic worldview, where reality is not what it seems and madness is the only reason, because the world itself is a madhouse. In this sense, Nathanaël is no crazier for believing in the Sandman than Clara is for rejecting fantasy as part of everyday life. Nathanael's strange fears have power over him because they exist, his belief in their influence makes them real. Hoffman uses the grotesque to demonstrate that men are puppets on the grand stage of the supernatural world and are ruled by forces they do not understand. Fantasy, imagination and dreams are part of their reality, perhaps they are reality, because their belief in them makes it so. German romanticism was not only a philosophy in itself, but also a protest against the precepts of the Enlightenment and a reaction. to the scientific rationalization of the world. This perhaps explains why Hoffmann, being a German romantic writer, wanted to leave these two interpretations in The Sandman; one for Romanticism and one for the Enlightenment. The interpretation.