Beware Who is the ?

The sandman is from “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1816). He was originally a lovable character who sprinkles sand into the eyes of children to help them sleep, but Hoffmann turned him into a sinister monster who takes the eyes of children who do not go to bed and feeds them to his own children.

Primary text translated from German to English: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html Fact Sheet

● Distinguishing characteristics: he is never seen, so nothing is known about his appearance, but the narrator describes the terrifying dull noise of footsteps. An old lady describes the sandman’s children as having “crooked beaks like owls so that they can pick up the eyes of naughty human children” ● How to recognize the sandman: dull footsteps on their way to your room, but before you can see or recognize him, he sprinkles sand into your eyes to close them and take them ● How to defend against the sandman: no mention of how to defend ● Victims: naughty children who don’t go to bed ● Where the sandman comes from: Western and Northern European folklore History and Relatives

● He appears in Scandinavian traditional folklore as a benevolent figure who sprinkles sand into the eyes of children to help them sleep. Hoffmann based his version of the sandman on this story. ● In Hans Christian Andersen's folk tale Ole Lukøje (1841), the sandman is a benevolent figure who sprinkles sand into the eyes of children and tells them beautiful stories that are remembered as dreams when they wake up. He makes naughty children sleep heavily, so they wake up having had no dreams. ● In the song “Mr. Sandman” (1954), Pat Ballard asks Mr. Sandman to “bring me a .” Again, he is not a sinister monster. ● In ’s graphic novels series Sandman (1989-1996), Morpheus, the god of dreams, creates the , who steals the eyes of his victims. This was likely influenced by Hoffmann’s sandman. Interpretations The sandman’s act of robbing one’s eyes produces a feeling of “the uncanny.” According to Freud, the concept refers to something that is strangely familiar, not just mysterious. Nathanael remembering his childish fear of the sandman is an uncanny return of the familiar.

To not have eyes is to be in a perpetual state of uncertainty. The sandman draws on this fear of intellectual uncertainty. The monster symbolizes dark themes such as voyeurism, the castration complex, and visual fixation, which all point to the deep human fear of losing something. Recommended Reading ● Freud, Sigmund. 1919. The Uncanny. Translated by Alix Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press. ○ http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf ● Kuzniar, Alice. 1989. “Ears Looking at You.” South Atlantic Review 54, no. 2 (May): 7-21. Accessed July 4, 2017. ○ http://www.jstor.org/stable/3200548 ● Wosk, Julie. 2015. “Dancing with Robots and Women in Robotics Design.” In My Fair Ladies, 152-165. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ○ http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15r3ztj Works Cited

● Washington. 2016. "Freud and the Literary Imagination." Last modified winter 2016. Accessed July 4, 2017. http://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Uncanny.Notes.html. ● Wikipedia. 2017. “Sandman.” Last modified June 18. 2017. Accessed July 4, 2017. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandman. ● Wikipedia. 2017. “The Sandman (short story).” Last modified April 20, 2017. Accessed July 4, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(short_story). ● Freud, Sigmund. 1919. The Uncanny. Translated by Alix Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press. Process and Acknowledgements

Research narrative

Thank you to Rosalind for answering a few questions!