“The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Reviewed by Stacie Pope

 

In “The Sandman” by ETA Hoffmann, there are many forces at work in the short story.  The story begins with a letter from Nathaniel to Lothario.  The letter begins describing his beautiful Clara, and then turns darker towards a secret of his past that he hasn’t shared with anyone.  The new character Coppelius is introduced into the story.  Clara intercepts the letter to Lothario and reads it, so then she writes him back and tells him his mind is exaggerating something that happened to him as a child.  This infuriates him, yet he doesn’t challenge his lover.  Then the story attains a narrator who goes on to describe the current events.  Nathaniel is a student of science, and Coppelius shows up with a changed name.  However, he is still an alchemist or the devil, whichever character is talking about him at the time.  Coppelius begins to haunt Nathaniel day and night, who is falling in love with his teacher’s daughter and forgetting his beloved Clara.  This set the horrible events into motion that bring about Nathaniel’s ultimate death, when he finds out that his new love is a clock machine.  The only happy character in the story is the one who didn’t believe that Coppelius had any evilness to him.

 

The timeline for this story is hard to place, because the narration for the story switches.  I felt that this story could conceivably have been a first time science fiction story, rather than a literature assignment; however, there were a lot of themes mixed into this very short story.  Many things happened in a very short period.

 

I liked this story, for it reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe, who was a master at this kind of eerie suspense.

 

Questions to think about:

 

• Do you think that Coppelius was truly evil, or was it in NathanielÂ’s mind?  If not, at the end of the story where Coppelius told everyone to let Nathaniel alone he would come down out of the tower.  Do you think that he thought Nathaniel would fall?
• Was Clara truly good, or did you feel like she might have had some bad in her for discrediting NathanielÂ’s fears?
• Do you consider this story to be more science fiction, than reality?  Might it have all been in NathanielÂ’s mind, and if it was would it just be the story of a mental patient, not science fiction?
• How was this story specific to Germany?
• If the characters were placed under good and evil columns, where would you place the father, Lothario, and Spalanzani?
• What did Olympia represent?
• Is Coppelius truly the Sandman?  Were the references to the eyes and the eyewear that Coppelius is bringing to the apartment just coincidence or did they convince you?