Nathanael is in distress; he believes he's met someone very like the Sandman, the fabled monster said to visit belligerent children at bedtime to throw sand in their eyes (or remove them entirely). This figure claims his father's life, and appears in other times as other people to wreak havoc. His beloved, Clara, is convinced he's conjured these events up in his mind (or at least exaggerated them), and tries to rationally explain away what he's experienced. He goes through cycles of despondency, lucidity, and panic until it all ends poorly.
I put this story on my German Reading List because Hoffmann is famous (he wrote The Nutcracker) and it sounded cool. Mostly, it was bizarre. The story is deliberately ambiguous and inconclusive; was Nathanael mad or not? Reading analyses, people believe the man represented romanticism and the woman the enlightenment. It could be. It was suspenseful and spooky, but not as interesting as I'd hoped. At least it was short.
Rating: C
No comments:
Post a Comment