Compare And Contrast Fight Club And William Wilson

William Wilson and Fight Club: A Comparison

A thrilling short story, “William Wilson” (1839) is a chronicle narrator as he coexists with a “double”, a man with eerily similar features and contours as the narrator. It is revealed at the end of the story that the double is an actually a split personality of the narrator. The story, although short, explores the sudden and violent turn of events when the narrator confronts the doppelganger during the schizoid reality. The struggle of the narrator in “William Wilson” can be seen in the movie named “Fight Club” (1999); the movie contains plot development with striking resemblances to Poe’s literature.

We examine “William Wilson” in segmented intervals. The narrator begins his story by establishing a mood of suspense and confusion, as he is near

“Fight Club”, a movie narrated in first person, shows the interaction of the main character and his alter ego. The struggle to control the body is a recurring theme in both “William Wilson” and “Fight Club”. In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the narrator follows a downward path of vice as he ages. His unruly temperament from a young age, described as “imaginative…and easily excitable” (23), set the tracks for chaos and injury. In the various stages of moral degradation, the double attempts to rectify the narrator’s mind. In three occasions, the double, dressed in a cloak, provokes the narrator by saying “William Wilson” and leaves. The first occasion marks the first step toward vice, when the narrator begins to drink heavily to forget; the second occasion was marked by the cloaked man’s attempt to stop short the narrator from conning a wealthy lord; lastly, the cloaked man intercepts the narrator’s attempt to commit adultery with the young wife of a Roman duke. The confrontation turned violent, and the narrator self-afflicts a mortal wound, killing the alter ego (double) as well as