research paper by:
Orlin Damyanov
EN 120B
Prof. Dr. R. Beardsworth
The American University of Paris
home paper
In the Sandman, the uncunniness of the tale could be perceived in two
directions--the first being that of intellectual uncerainty and the other
is that of psychoanalytical experience and namely the ideas of Freud. In
order to describe the uncanny experience in Hoffmann's The Sandman and
Shelley's Frankenstein it is idispensible, however, to explain and define
beforehand what is the connotation of Unheimlich. In my further analysis
of the uncanny, I relate the two works and stress on the obsession of the
two characters which explains the uncanniness in them. Moreover, I focus
on the surrounding environment in the face of the society because it is
pertinent to the discussion of the uncunniness. The unconsciousness is
also palying a major role in the description of the uncanny. Thus we attribute
the uncanny to the collapsing psychic boundaries of conscious and unconscious,
self and other, living and dead, real and unreal. These recurrent themes,
which trigger our most primitive desires and fears are the very hallmarks
of Shelley's and Hoffmann's fiction.
Before continuing with the analyasis of this topic, I would like to clarify
and define the meaning of the word "uncanny" in the way I understand
it. This word comes from the German Unheimlich which means "unhomely",
unfamiliar, uncomfortable, uneasy, and at the same time gloomy, ghastly,
deamonic and gruesome. According to Freud, this word justifies the need
of a special conceptual term, which is to express certain things that lie
in the field of what is frightening but at the same time leads back to
what is known of old and familiar. Freud, however, argues that the "uncanny"
is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar. .
When we read the tale of Hoffmann, we are undoubtufully left in utter uncertainty
of whether what is happening to Nathaniel is real or a fruit of his deranged
subconsciousness. Thus, the uncanny is entangled in the ambivalence of
the tale. Moreover, we could clearly notice that Hoffmann is puropesly
creating such uncanny effects as to leave the reader in uncertainty. For
instance, when Hoffmann enters the "personage" of Olympia, he
does not mention whether she is a human being or a doll and in such a way
the reader is not immediately acquainted with the truth and his attention
is thus not directly focused on this uncertainty . It is noteworthy that
this way of constructing the tale creates quite an unparalleled emotional
effect.
Freud, however, argues that at the end of the tale we come to know the
truth, that is Coppola is, in fact, Coppelius and therefore the Sandman.
He argues that the theme of Olympia and the succession of the events in
the story could not be the only underlying factors in evoking this extraordinary
atmosphere of uncunniness. For Freud, the reason could be discerned in
Nathaniel's fear of losing his eyes * an obsessive fear haunting him from
his very childhood. This anxiety about his eyes is according to Freud enough
a substitute for the dread of being castrated. Freud proves his thesis
by replacing the Sandman by the dreaded father at whose hands castration
is expected. According to him, this image of the father has an inimate
connection to Nathaniel's anxiety about his eyes. It seperates Nathaniel
from Clara and from his best friend--her brother; it destroys Olympia--the
second object of his love , and drives him into suicide when he has returned
to the happiness of normal life with Clara.
In Shelley's Frankenstein we see the same symptoms in the character of
Frankenstein. His unforunate creation deprives him of his little brother,
his beloved Elizabeth, and in fact brings ruin to his whole family. Like
Nathaniel, he is incapable of loving a woman. The reason for this impotence
in Nathanial could be well attributed to his castration complex, as Freud
contemplates, "[Olympia] could be nothing else than a materialization
of Nathaniel's feminine attitude towards his father in his infancy"
. Similarly, the reason for Frankenstein's inability to love Elizabeth
is hidden in his fear of incestuously loving what he assumed throughout
his life to be his cousin/sister. His unconscious incestious repressed
desire is, in fact, that of loving his mother, as revealed from his dream,
"I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the loom of health, walking in the
streets of Inglostadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as
I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue
of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought I held the corpse
of my dead mother in my arms" .
In Frankenstein, the uncunny is frightening because it marks the return
of repressed psychic material that confronts narcissistic fantasies of
immortality through self-duplication with a double that is a ghostly "harbinger
of death" . Similarly, the Sandman story arouses uncunny fears of
the idea of a "living doll", the idea that we will not be able
to distinguish wheter an object is alive or not.
Frankenstein falls into a complete oblivion due to his obsession of reanimaing
dead matter. He does not notice the change of seasons * something he used
to observe with utmost delight. Although he realizes the mistake and consequences
of this horrifying acts, he does not do anything to correct them, not even
after the deaths of his most dear beings, but again falls into the abyss
of inhuman obsession expressed in his maniac and ineffectual pursuit of
his creature.
In the case of Nathaniel, we discern the same type of detrimental obsession
although, due to the shortness of The Sandman and its purposeful mysticism,
we do not have enough information to judge Nathanial's actions. The result,
nevertheless, is strikingly similar. Nathanial, incapable of recovering
from his first obsession about the Sandman is only to fall into another
extremity * his love towards the lifeless Olympia. How ironic are his own
words, "O you glorious profound nature ... only you, you alone, understand
me completely"
In his actions, Frankenstein behaves obsessively, frightfully, uncanny:
he acts so in creating the monster and at the end as well, when he is pursuing
his own creation, "obsolutelly" confident that only its revengeful
death would provide a solution. It should be noted that during the rest
of the time, Frankenstein is rather inactive and passive, always providing
a moral excuse for that. He does not realize the deceitful nature of his
behavior when he undergoes one his regular spasms of desire to return to
the virtues of domesticity, "the amaibleness of domestic affection".
Nathaniel, as well, exhibits the futileness of his passive response to
his condition when he deceivingly thinks that a return to a normal, domestic
life will efface all his nightmares as revealed from his letter before
returning home, "I shall be with you in a fortnight ... the ill mood
which (I confess it) threatened to overcome me ... will then be thrown
away."
It is the pursuit of the uncanny, the search for more freedom and fulfillment
that motivates Nathaniel and Frankenstein in their departure from the world
of banalness and domestification. Instead of becoming passive citizens
in a dull bourgeois society they act according to their unconscious drives
for finding an answer to the uncanny secrets of their nature and identity.
In doing so they become transcibers of their unconscious desires but that
automatically makes them strangers, outlaws to their society because they
transgress rules and norms of the community in which they are living. Indeed,
as their conscious minds are incapapble of being reaffirmed, the conflict
between unconscious wishes and the values of community is becoming prevalent.
This constant inability to resolve this conflict or, in other words, the
failure to curb the wishes of the unconscious, which turns to be ruinous
for both Shelley's Frankenstein and Hoffman's Nathaniel. The uncanniness
of the two charactrers starts from their childhood and continues to their
death.The implicit moral of both stories is the that we must live in a
comparative moderation of our desires if we want sanity. In fact, we need
to consciously control the disturbing effects of the unconscious. In search
of this difficult balance one inevitably comes upon the the intricacy and
uncunniness of human nature. If we want to see the reasons for this uncunniness,
we have to unvail the truth that is concealed in the very depths of the
unconsciousness which leads us to an inevitable complication associated
with the difficulty of dealing with it. It is not surprising that das Unheimliche
is so ambiguous in meaning, because it is a connotation to something we
do not understand and would probably be never able to really understand.
In conclusion, I would say that the power of literature is connoted exactly
in this unparalleled symbolic order of language that can never produce
or pin down a definite meaning but nevertheless passes on "the desire
and curse of meaning" . It is what the transcendant signification
of the text that leaves the reader always anticipating and curious and
at the same time delighted from the pleasure this play of the authors brings
to her/him. On the other hand there is always this uncanny component of
meaning that cannot be clarified or rationalized but nevertheless is an
intrinsic part to our reading experience.
visitors since August 1996