33 pages • 1 hour read
E. T. A. HoffmannThe Sandman
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1816A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Nathanael
Nathanael stands as an intricate amalgamation of obsession, emotional volatility, and vulnerability. His psychology becomes the landscape on which the story unfolds, complementing the suspenseful tale of horror with a nuanced study of the human condition.
Nathanael’s childhood fear of the Sandman is not just a plot device but a psychological anchor that ties him to his past and resurfaces in his adult life. This fear manifests in complex ways, particularly in his relationship with Olimpia, the automaton. His fixation on her is more than an infatuation—Olimpia seems to listen without judgment, offering Nathanael a sense of peace and understanding that he doesn’t find elsewhere. This is especially significant when contrasted with Clara, who represents rationality and often dismisses his emotional complexities. Olimpia, in her silence, becomes a blank canvas onto which Nathanael projects his desires and anxieties. In this context, Olimpia serves as a mirror reflecting Nathanael’s own emotional turmoil. She becomes a vessel for his vulnerabilities, fears, and desires. This one-way-relationship serves as a vehicle for the story to explore deeper existential questions about human connection, emotional dependency, and the blurred lines between reality and illusion.
Nathanael’s sensitive nature reflects a larger concern with the ways in which the social shifts to industry, technology, and science might adversely affect humanity, particularly in their ability to process feelings and reality and their ability to communicate these experiences to others.
Clara
Clara serves as both Nathanael’s love interest and a source of grounding rationality in the face of his obsessive tendencies. Her character is defined by her steadfastness and her unwavering commitment to Nathanael, even in the face of his increasingly erratic behavior. She frequently offers him alternative perspectives to his delusions.
Her rationality is also evident in her approach to love. Her love for Nathanael is not a blind devotion; it is a decision. She navigates the complexities of her relationship with Nathanael using reason as her compass. This is where her Enlightenment principles shine through.
Clara’s character is a tapestry of Enlightenment ideals, woven into the fabric of a story deeply rooted in Romanticism. Her rationality, often mistaken by Nathanael as emotional shallowness, is actually a form of emotional intelligence. For example, while Clara does tell Nathanael that his fears of being haunted by The Sandman of his childhood are in his head, she assures him that Coppelius is still a distasteful man and Nathanael’s fears make sense, even as they have manifested in a fantastic way. She doesn’t accept Nathanael’s obsessions at face value but probes deeper, seeking underlying causes and potential solutions.
Coppelius and Coppola
Coppelius, a German lawyer, and Coppola, an Italian optician, are doppelgängers, a literary concept that refers to a duplicate or double of a person. Nathanael perceives them to be the same person, but the text does not establish whether this is true. They are flat, secondary characters whose sinister and mysterious presence permeates the narrative, and they represent the childhood fears buried deep in Nathanael’s subconscious. Their ambiguity and duality are crucial elements for understanding the themes and symbols explored in the story.
As a figure associated with the “Sandman” of Nathanael’s childhood, Coppelius is a symbol of the fear of the unknown that consumes the protagonist. His eyes glow like fire, and his grotesque, frightening appearance makes him a menacing and unsettling character. But Coppelius is much more than just a physical antagonist; he also personifies the fear, trauma, and paranoia that consume Nathanael. Coppelius is a device for exploring themes of identity, alter ego, and the dark side of the main character.
When Coppola says to Nathanael, “I’ave beautiful eyes-a to sell you, beautiful eyes-a!” (105), it becomes clear that the glasses he sells are a significant symbol in the story, representing the distortion of Nathanael’s perception, as he is unable to distinguish between the two figures. This links Coppola to the recurrent motif of eyes, which symbolize the way characters perceive their surroundings in the story. The constant and eerie presence of Coppelius/Coppola represents the fine line between sanity and “madness,” which is related to one’s knowledge of reality.
Olimpia
Olimpia, an intriguing element in the narrative, is a flat character in the tale. Her introduction to the narrative sets off a series of events that propel a profound transformation in Nathanael. Olimpia’s plot outcome is accentuated by the fact that she is not a human character, but an automaton created by Professor Spalanzani, who portrays her as his beloved and talented daughter.
Hoffmann’s methods of characterization for Olimpia are subtle and intriguing. Despite her lack of biological life, Olimpia plays the role of a deuteragonist. She is not human, yet her existence triggers a profound crisis in the protagonist. She becomes the object of his affection, but more importantly, she becomes a mirror reflecting his own obsessions and fears. Her mechanical nature serves as a stark contrast to Nathanael’s emotional volatility, yet it is this very difference that draws him to her. For Nathanael, Olimpia mirrors the human desire to find idealized love, even if it means ignoring reality. Blind in his own narcissism and obsession, “for he felt as though Olimpia had voiced his own thoughts about his works and about his poetic gift in general” (112).
Olimpia’s existence also raises questions about the nature of humanity and the ethics of creating life-like automatons. As a creation of Spalanzani and Coppelius, Olimpia embodies the scientific and pseudo-scientific themes that permeate the story. In this way, she, like Clara, is a product of Enlightenment rationality taken to an extreme, a being who exists at the intersection of art and science, imagination and reason.
Olimpia, with her humanlike appearance and behavior, represents this concept perfectly. Her existence challenges the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, the human and the non-human, contributing significantly to the eerie and unsettling atmosphere of the story.
