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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Automatons

Olympia is a man-made object that appears to move of her own free will, but all of her actions are ultimately determined by the clockwork mechanisms, all of which Spalanzani designed. Everything that she sees is determined by the eyes that Coppelius made for her. She moves and speaks and sings, but all of these movements are determined by the actions of others. In short, she gives the imitation of free will, but she does not have free will at all. Hoffmann repeatedly makes references to automatons over the course of the story, whether in the literal sense of wooden clockwork dolls, or in the figurative sense of humans who have no reason, emotions, or power of their own. Nathaniel uses the word automaton to denounce Clara when she does not give him the response to his poem he was hoping for. On the wider, technological scale, automatons may be seen as a symbol of anxiety that people have about the progress of technology and its negative effects on human beings. 

Smoke and Mist

Smoke and mist symbolize the blurring between two disparate things until it is impossible to see which is which. Nathaniel’s father, during storytelling evenings in the study, often has a cloud of pipe smoke surrounding him as he tells stories to the children, and this often leads to a blurring of the lines between the real and the fanciful. The smoke is often heavy enough that the children feel wrapped up in it, and Nathaniel imagines that he sees things that really aren’t there. This is helped along by Nathaniel’s father giving the children picture books to read during these evenings in the study, feeding their imaginations. When Nathaniel’s father is killed, the scene in the study is a distorted mirror image of this childhood scene. His father is lying on the study floor, with smoke from the explosion billowing everywhere, and the sight traumatizes Nathaniel for the rest of his life. Smoke and mist indicate the increasingly dark fantasies and phantoms that fill Nathaniel’s mind as he begins to lose his ability to see the world clearly.

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