ABSTRACT
The dark pastoral depicts the nightmare world of childhood. It is, essentially, the other side of the green world. About Hoffmann first fairy tale, The Golden Pot, Hoffmann wrote that he intended it to be "fairy-like and wondrous, but stepping boldly into ordinary everyday life". Nutcracker and the King of Mice begins with the familiar holiday. Nathanael, as a child, is traumatized by a bogeyman-like figure, who comes to represent the demonic side of Sandman otherwise pleasant father. The Old Curiosity Shop is the story of a childless childhood. Without toys or playmates, the life of the child hero, Little Nell, is somber. Nell is Dickens's tragic protagonist of childhood, and hers is the tragic plot of the novel. In this way, Nell comes to understand what Dickens so passionately believed - that childhood as a state of mind provides the potential for compassion and for understanding its inherent wisdom.
