In “The Sandman” by ETA Hoffmann, Nathanael composes a letter to his fiancée's brother Lothar recalling the terror of the legendary Sandman who stole the eyes of children who wanted not go to bed and feed them to his children on the moon. From that point on in the story, every mention of the eyes leads him to remember the Sandman's terror. In the most terrifying experience, Nathanael sees Olympia, the girl to whom he will propose marriage and who will later turn out to be a robot, lying on the ground without her eyes. He becomes hysterical and in his state of madness is taken to a mental hospital. Of central importance is the theme of "eyes", symbolizing narcissism and the struggles some have to deal with stress, and in a more specific sense, Sigmund Freud interprets this theme as the fear of castration. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The climax of the tale is where Nathanael sees Olympias, his muse, with her eyes removed, and Coppelius (which means "eye sockets" in Italian), the one who plucked them out. His childhood nightmares return when he realizes that Gabrielle was only a reflection of himself, that he had forced his soul on her so that she was everything he had ever wanted, even if she wasn't real. Nathanael's struggles with reality and his obsession with "beautiful eyes" reveal his narcissistic nature; with this Hoffmann creates a satire of society. These beautiful eyes make him fall in love with his girlfriend Clara and Olimpia, a girl he considers perfect and with whom he could have everything he wanted. Hoffmann criticizes society in that people always look for perfection in others when they themselves are not perfect. He criticizes the fashion and beauty industry and society by saying that what we have fallen in love with - the beautiful models and wealthy lifestyles we strive for - we cannot have. We fall in love with the images we create in our heads and become controlled by the fear of our nightmares. We have lost touch with reality, just like Nathanael. Freud, however, draws on a completely different aspect of the story, believing that Olympia, apparently real but in reality not, is not the fulcrum of the story. Freud, in his essay “Uncanny”, describes the symbolism of “being robbed of one's eyes” as the most disturbing and important aspect of the story. He cites the times when Nathanael is forced to relive the same moments, to retrace the same steps, as if he had been robbed of his sight, which Freud sees as a symbolic fear of castration. The fear of going blind, says Freud, is the substitute for castration. As evidence he refers to Greek mythology and the blinding of Oedipus, which was an attenuated form of castration. Freud's beliefs always seem exaggerated at first, but he has the literary background to be able to prove whatever theory he has, and he seems to be spot on with this one. With the main focus of Nathanael's love, fear of Coppelius, a large, malformed man haunting him since his childhood, it seems very possible that Nathanael may have witnessed a castration as a child, perhaps the one that caused the death of his father. , or feared that he himself was castrated, which caused his trauma and tore at the fabric of his mind that kept him in touch with reality. It would help explain why she is capable of falling in love with a robot, or trying to throw Clara off a bridge, or ultimately killing herself just at the sight of Coppelius, or the thought of "beautiful eyes." psychological problems, Hoffman does not allow the reader to have a complete understanding of what is truly wrong with Nathanael, which is why the theory.