The main similarity between "The Turn of the Screw," by Henry James, and "The Sandman," by E. Hoffman is that the main character in each story saw something - or thinks they saw something - that changes their life. The governess in "The Turn of the Screw" starts off loving her job and the kids she tends to, until she begins to see, what she believes, are ghosts. In "The Sandman," the young protagonist, Nathaniel, seems to be a typical child, until one day, he spies on his dad and sees him and the Sandman doing something strange in his father's room. Nathaniel becomes frightened, screams aloud and is pulled from his hiding spot by Coppelius, who then yelled at him, "Eyes here' eyes!" (Hoffman 3). His father stops Coppelius, but not before Nathaniel is scared for life. Then, about a year later Nathaniel's father was killed by an explosion during one of their experiments, so, now, as a little child, Nathaniel has two big reasons to be completely terrified of who he thinks is "The Sandman." With that, both of these stories fall into Todorov's "The Fantastic." .
While these two stories have some similarities as two of the creepiest, most ambiguous stories out there, they definitely have their own style. "The Turn of the Screw" starts off fine and gradually gets creepier as the story continues, starting from the first time the governess sees a man on the tower staring at her, all the way to when Miles just dies at the very end. On the other hand, "The Sandman," starts off really creepy by telling the story about the Sandman stealing kids' eyes, Coppelius and Nathaniel's father doing crazy experiments, and Nathaniel's father dying in an explosion, and, stays creepy throughout, with Olympia, the robot girl, and maybe a supernatural telescope.
The next similarity between these two stories is the reliability of each story's main character, or narrator. The governess in "The Turn of the Screw" can be perceived two different ways: either completely trusted, or thought to be a crazy person.
