“Nathanael, The maniac”: Mental instability in The Sandman

Ananya Iyer

Remedial for Quiz 3

E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Sandman” (1817) is a unique, pioneering literary piece for a number of reasons. This short story consists of three letters back and forth from the protagonist, Nathanael, to his fiancé and brother-in-law, relating his unsettling experiences in his university town. This is followed by a narration about Nathanael and his subsequent descent into madness. The beauty of the text, however, lies in the duality of the narration, between fantasy and reality, with the author never quite letting on whether the horrific, supernatural events happened in reality or were a figment of Nathanael’s imagination. In this same duality lies the psychological significance of this story.

As the title suggests, the story revolves around the Sandman, a villainous monster that Nathanael was told about in his childhood. He, in real life as a child, ascribes this figure of the Sandman to his father’s lawyer who he despises, and later blames him for his father’s death. This same image of the Sandman returns many years later, in a barometer seller, when Nathanael is a university student. Nathanael is convinced that the Sandman is here again to ruin him. Now, if we assume that all the supernatural elements are in Nathanael’s mind, that this story is indeed fantasy, he then exhibits the primary symptoms of schizoaffective personality disorder.

In the beginning of the story, Nathanael speaks of his childhood, when he was always ushered of to bed early since the Sandman, who tormented children and stole their eyes, was climbing up to his door to meet his father. One day, desperate to see the Sandman, Nathanael hides in his father’s study, and is shocked to find that the “Sandman” was in fact his father’s obnoxious lawyer, Coppelius, here to perform alchemic experiments with his father. It is here that Nathanael suffers from his first psychotic episode. He hallucinates that Coppelius was holding him next to a fire and was attempting to pry out his eyes. He wakes up to find himself in his bed, being nursed by his mother, told that nothing of the sort occurred, the lawyer only pushed him out of the room. So, he experiences transient psychosis even as a child, meaning that there were mild schizophrenic symptoms even in his early years. A few years later, his father passes away in a blotched experiment, and Coppelius ran from the scene. Hence, Nathanael’s delusion and fear of Coppelius as a villain was solidified.

According to researchers, about 60% cases of schizoaffective personality disorder report an event that then triggered the symptoms. This is true in Nathanael’s case too, where the entry of the barometer seller Coppola in his university town sets off an otherwise smart, stable Nathanael’s psychotic symptoms again. He speaks of being in an emotional blank after his father’s demise, to be awakened then only by his fiancé Klara, however he now suffers from episodes of mania and energy, much like bipolar mood disorder, accompanied by screaming of misplaced words and actions, an embodiment of bizarre “madness”. The basic criteria of schizoaffective personality is an onset of both schizophrenia and mood disorder symptoms. Nathanael, in the story, replicates the positive and disorganized symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations, delusions and disorganized speech and behavior.

He also experiences delusions where he believes that his fiancé is an automaton, since she responds rationally to his lamenting of emotional experiences. Ironically, the second woman who he falls in love with turned out to actually be an automaton, whose eyes were made by Coppola. He is then convinced that the Sandman is here in order to snatch all that he loves from him. He returns to his hometown to make amends with Klara, however on one such fateful day, he sees from the top of a tower ,Coppelius the lawyer, in the crowd, who seems to have returned to the town after running from his father’s death. This unleashes his psychotic symptoms and manic mood again, he jumps up and down, screaming ”Ring of fire”  and then in while maniacally laughing, jumps to his death.

The suspicion of being an automaton is relevant even to contemporary times since it is what experts believe will occur with the onset and density of realistic artificial intelligence, with confusion on what is human and what isn’t. Thus we can see that, The Sandman, though written in 1817, is leagues ahead of its time clinically. It is a fantastic piece, that I would hope everyone has a chance to read.

Works referenced
Hoffman, E.T.A. The Sandman. Vancouver: Read Books, 2011. Print.
Butcher, James. N and Susan Mineka and Jill M. Hooley. Abnormal Psychology. Fifteenth edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc, 2013. Print.