In this monologue, not only is Carlota feeling sorry for the slaves,
but she is also suggesting that they have a soul, calling for their
manumission, and renouncing wealth. These are all good,
progressive feelings which suggest that Carlota can somehow see
clearly, but somehow they point to her blindness as well. She is
totally oblivious of Enrique’s financial concerns, of his conditional
love for her, and also of Sab’s suffering. At that very moment Sab is
exclaiming to himself in a deep and melancholy voice, “Why can’t
your innocent and fervent dreams come true, angel of Heaven? . . .
Why did He Who placed you into this world of wretchedness and evil
not give this handsome foreigner the mulatto’s soul?” (58).
Once again, these are all good feelings, yet they produce an
uncanny effect. Both Sab and Carlota seem to have been robbed of
their eyes, they see, but they do not see. Freud quotes E. Jentsch
who affirms that one of the surest devices for producing this effect is
to leave a “[…] reader wondering whether a particular figure is a
real person or an automaton […]” (135). Freud then explains that
with this observation Jentsch is referring to Hoffmann’s story, the
Sand-Man. In the novel Sab, Enrique Otway could very well play the
part of the Sand-Man from the very beginning. He throws sand in
Sab’s eyes as well as in Carlota’s. In Carlotas’s for all the obvious
reasons, love makes her blind. She also appears unreal at times, a
crying doll of sorts. When it comes to Sab, Enrique plays the role of
the Sand-Man in a more subtle way. First, he prevents Sab from
seeing himself as a person of value. Then, more importantly, the
jealousy Enrique arouses in Sab, the sexual jealousy, -- since Enrique
is He who will ultimately possess Carlota, the angel of Heaven, --
renders Sab all the blinder in his passion. Enrique, in turn, the Sand-
Man himself, is just as blind, for he cannot see beyond personal gain.
In this case, it is his father, George, who has played the part of the
Sand-Man, by not allowing Enrique to see value anywhere but in riches. The uncanny effect here is now being produced by each
character possibly being another or any other character’s double.
Carlota and Sab are just as blindly in love. Carlota and Enrique both
see each other as commodities. Carlota and Teresa, in turn,
represent the shallow and the profound, the said and the unsaid;
they are recurring counterparts.
The tables turn in Chapters Seven and Eight when Sab wins the
lottery. Now he is the one with the money, therefore the power.
Now Sab has as much money and power as Enrique, and becomes
Enrique’s double in this sense; Enrique’s darkness coming from his
evil intentions, and Sab’s darkness being merely at the surface of his
skin. For the first and last time there is “[…] an expression of vivid
joy shining in his [Sab’s] eyes” (63).
Coincidentally, Sab is officially declared a free man just as he
comes into the lottery money. Freud points out that the uncanny
effect arises with the double, as well as when “[…] the boundary
between fantasy and reality is blurred, when we are faced with the
reality of something that we have until now considered imaginary,
when a symbol takes on the full function and significance of what it
symbolizes […] This is at the root of much that is uncanny about
magical practices” (150-151).
Chapter Nine takes the reader into this world of the magical. In
their excursion into the Cuban countryside, the protagonists, Sab,
Carlota, Enrique, Don Carlos, Teresa, and Carlota’s siblings,
encounter Martina, a descendant of the Indian race, “that
unfortunate race.” (72) Martina happens to be a prophet, a seer. One
of her prophecies has to do with the future of the oppressed races of
Cuba. “The Earth which once was drenched in blood will be so
again: the descendants of the oppressors will be themselves
oppressed, and black men will be the terrible avengers of those of
copper color” (73).
Instantly, Carlota weeps, and Enrique makes fun of her tears, for
how could she possibly weep over a story that possibly never
existed, except in that woman’s imagination? With tear-filled eyes
Carlota explains that what she is weeping for is a past that is no
more, a time when the “unfortunate people” were the peaceful
owners of this virgin soil where everyone lived in happiness, a virgin
soil that did not need to be “[…] watered with the sweat of slaves to be productive” (73).
What Carlota is describing is a paradise lost, or a lost home. This
primitive lost home is precisely the place she longs for. The mere
thought of it makes her both fearful and sad. But why would “home”
arouse these negative feelings in her? Freud writes that, “[…] the
uncanny is that species of the frightening that goes back to what was
once well known and had long been familiar” (124). He then goes
on to explain under what conditions the familiar can become
uncanny and frightening. These are, precisely some of the conditions
described in the novel Sab. These include: characters behaving as if
they were automatons, or automaton-like characters such as Enrique
behaving as if they were flesh and blood; a character and his double,
the slave and the woman, for example; and coincidences, nostalgia,
magic, prophecies. In Chapter Ten, Sab saves Enrique’s life again, a
coincidence, and it is Teresa’s turn to become Sab’s double. They
both love passionately and are not loved in return.
Part One of the novel closes with Chapter Eleven. Don Carlos is
through acquainting Enrique with all of the property he owns, and
Enrique is surprised to find the low value of his holdings. His
attitude toward Carlota changes. As to Carlota, “For the first time an
indefinite but cruel distrust lay heavily upon her open and trusting
heart” (89). Now the countryside, which seemed so homely and
familiar the day before makes her sad, and she cannot explain why.
This melancholy state, in turn, makes her blinder. In her blindness
she speaks like an automaton. She is so blind as to say, “You don’t
understand that, Teresa, for you have never loved” (92). The chapter
ends with Carlota crying herself to sleep. The of-so-familiar Sand-
Man has made his rounds again.
The second part of the novel begins with Sab’s and Teresa’s secret
encounter. In the dark, they reveal their secrets to each other. Teresa
admits to being madly in love with Enrique and Sab confesses his
mad passion for Carlota. “Then I remember that I was the offspring
of a defiled race, then I remembered too that I was a mulatto and a
slave … then my heart seared by love and jealousy, first began to
throb with indignation […]” (97).
In the throbs of this indignation Sab slowly comes to the realization that nature is no less the mother of the blacks than of the whites. Human society, however, has not listened to nature who considers all men brothers. “Idiotic society,” Sab concludes, “which has reduced us [blacks] to the necessity of hating it and of founding our happiness on its total destruction!” (97).