 McCay made stylistic choices to add emotion to the " historical record " , as in the anxiety @-@ inducing shots of the submarines lurking beneath the surface , and abstract styling of the white sheets of sky and sea , vast voids which engorge themselves on the drowning bodies . Animation historian Paul Wells suggested the negative space in the frames filled viewers with anxiety through psychological projection or introjection , Freudian ideas that had begun circulating in the years before the film 's release . Scholar Ulrich Merkl suggests that as a newspaperman , McCay was likely aware of Freud 's widely reported work , though McCay never publicly acknowledged such an influence . 
