Aura

Elements of the uncanny are apparent throughout Aura. The manner by which the narrator describes the interactions between Senora and Aura highlight the uncanny nature of their partnership. Aura is often describes as being almost controlled in a puppet-like manner by her aunt. Aura’s motions seem lifeless and unplanned which gives the reader an uneasy feeling of Aura being only an object that seems human. “ … Aura hasn’t said a word and is eating with a sort of mechanical fatality, as if she is waiting for some outside impulse before picking up her knife and fork...but at that moment the Senora become motionless, and at the same moment Aura puts her knife on her plate and also becomes motionless, and you remember that the Senora put down her knife only a fraction of a second earlier.”(69). This interaction is uncanny because it is not apparent whether the aunt is actually in control of Aura because their motions are not synchronous, but at the same time the reader is lead to believe that Aura is not in control because she seems to copy the actions of her aunt with a certain time lag. This uncertainty in the level of human awareness that Aura possess leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling that is characteristic of the uncanny.