Eliminate fear image
In E. T. A. Hoffmann's 'The Sandman', the concept of eliminating the fear image emerges as Clara's central psychological strategy for countering Nathaniel's obsessive terror of the Sandman figure, whether embodied as the lawyer Coppelius or the barometer pedlar Giuseppe Coppola. Clara's approach is not merely a comforting gesture but a fully articulated philosophical position: she argues that the dark force threatening Nathaniel exists only insofar as he believes in it, and that by withdrawing that belief he can dissolve the phantom entirely. This doctrine becomes the focal point of the couple's conflict and a key to understanding the story's exploration of the boundary between subjective terror and objective reality.
Clara's Rationalist Doctrine
Clara articulates her position most fully in her letter to Nathaniel, written after she has read his account of the barometer salesman's visit. She confesses her firm conviction that 'all the awful and frightening things you speak of only happened in your imagination, and that the real outside world played little part in it.' She traces Nathaniel's terror back to his childhood: his nanny's nursery account of the Sandman became associated with the repulsive Coppelius, and the weird goings-on with his father at night were 'surely nothing other than alchemical experiments.' Clara insists that the dark force 'must reconfigure itself in our image, indeed it must become us; for only in this way will we be inclined to believe in it and give it the space it needs to realize its shadowy end.' She concludes that if one has 'enough good sense, fortified by healthy living, to recognize strange inimical influences as such, and steadfastly to hold to the path our nature and calling prescribe, then that sinister force will fail.' Her brother Lothar adds that the dark physical force to which people surrender themselves of their own free will often makes them internalize strange figures, so that they 'merely rouse the spirit which our vivid delusion makes us believe emanates from that figure.' Clara begs Nathaniel to 'erase the image of that ugly barrister Coppelius and the barometer pedlar Giuseppe Coppola from your mind,' assuring him that 'these strange figures have no power over you; only your belief in their malevolent power can, in fact, make them malevolent to you.'
The Strategy in Practice
Clara attempts to implement her strategy directly when Nathaniel returns home. She tells him that Coppelius is 'an evil inimical principle, a devilish force that infiltrated your life able to do dreadful things, but only if you refuse to banish him from your thoughts and feelings. As long as you believe in him he does indeed exist and affect you, only your belief gives him power over you.' Nathaniel, furious that Clara accepts the existence of demons only as a function of his state of mind, tries to counter with a disquisition on mystical teachings, but Clara cuts him short with an irrelevant matter, making him angrier. She later tries a lighter approach, telling him in the garden that they have driven out 'that repulsive Coppelius,' but this only reminds Nathaniel of the poem he has written, which he reads aloud. When Clara tells him to throw the 'raving – senseless – insane fairy tale into the fire,' Nathaniel shoves her away and calls her a 'lifeless, accursed automaton,' precipitating a duel with Lothar.
The Failure of the Strategy
The strategy of eliminating the fear image ultimately fails catastrophically. Nathaniel's terror is not a free-floating fantasy but is repeatedly triggered by real encounters: the barometer salesman who is indeed Coppelius in disguise, the purchase of Coppola's looking-glass that reveals Olympia's face, and the final revelation that Olympia is a lifeless automaton whose eyes are bloody orbs on the floor. When Spalanzani flings the eyes at Nathaniel's breast, madness seizes him, and he is taken to the madhouse. Even after his recovery, the looking-glass remains in his pocket, and when he mechanically reaches for it on the tower, the sight of Clara through the lens triggers a relapse. He tries to hurl Clara off the balcony, screaming 'Turn, little wooden doll, turn!' and eventually leaps to his death when he spots Coppelius below. Clara's rationalist faith that belief alone creates the monster is disproven by the story's events: Coppelius is real, the automaton is real, and the looking-glass has a genuine power to distort perception. The fear image cannot be eliminated by an act of will because it has an objective correlate in the world.
Thematic Significance
The eliminate fear image doctrine represents the story's central philosophical tension between rationalist enlightenment and Romantic irrationalism. Clara embodies a sensible, cheerful, prosaic nature that the narrator describes as having 'the healthy imagination of a cheerful, unaffected child, a deep womanly gentle disposition, and a downright sparkling, sharp-sighted intelligence.' She is scorned by mystics as 'cold, emotionless, prosaic,' but the story does not endorse her position. The narrator notes that Nathaniel's writings became 'dark, incomprehensible, shapeless' and that Clara found them a 'crashing bore,' yet the narrative itself validates Nathaniel's terror by making Coppelius and the automaton real. Clara's final fate—she is said to have been spotted years later 'seated, hand in hand, with a friendly man on a bench before the door of a lovely little country house, two bouncing boys playing at her feet'—suggests that her quiet domestic bliss was achieved only after Nathaniel's death, and that the fear image she tried to eliminate was never truly vanquished but merely outlived.
