Eva Hoffman - After Such Knowledge

The uncanny in Freud's formulation, is the sense of something that is both very alien and deeply familiar, something that only the unconscious knows. If so, then the second generation has grown up with the uncanny. And sometimes, it needs to be said, wrestling with shadows can be more frightening, or more confusing, than struggling with solid realities. Like Hamlet's father, the ghosts demand devotion, sacrifice, justice, truth, vengeance.