Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story “William Wilson” explores a human psychological feature, the alter ego- inhabited by a separate body, much like a doppelganger, following the main character from his childhood to adulthood. Our narrator conceals his identity through the name William Wilson and he considers his alter ego as a whole other individual, therefore alluding that his imagination has gotten the better of him. Poe uses his trademark unreliable narrator and the fact that the narrator’s story is based on his life events to achieve a unified effect of suspense, as the audience is left to question if they should trust this strange man and why he has a ghostly double following him around. The narrator first characterizes himself as …show more content…
William Wilson, or what he wishes to be entitled as, continues with a tale of a haunting boy who coincidentally is born the same day as he, goes by the same name and as he became older, “grew more powerful” than him(3). As he guides the audience through his experience at the school of Dr. Bransby, William Wilson constantly repeats how the boy has made many efforts to hold him back, but “no one else saw the battle going on between” them (13). This implies that the boy is part of an imagination and our narrator is most likely insane due to the fact that he cannot distinguish his mental musings from reality. Poe has cleverly utilized the senseless speaker to construct anxiety. For example, Wilson testifies that his double’s “voice, of course could not be as loud as mine, but he …show more content…
We begin to wonder why he is dominating since it is questionable that a man with a split personality disorder could intelligently think straight, perhaps the other half of his mind has either given up or does not exist anymore. Then out of nowhere, “the wide heavy doors of the room were suddenly opened. Every light in the room went out”(46). Wilson “had seen that a man entered”(46). The atmosphere created before the man entered solidifies the anticipation that something wicked may happen, but as the narrator realizes the unexplained figure was again very similar to him, the audience concludes that William Wilson from his childhood days has returned once again. Going mad, Poe’s unreliable narrator struggles to escape the presence of his eerie spirit. He stated, “I went from city to city, and in each one Wilson appeared. Paris, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow- he followed me everywhere” (54). Wilson had come to realize that his twin was purposely restricting him both mentally and physically. In one final action he stabbed the immoral figure through the heart thinking it would rid him forever of this wretched individual. Poe cunningly writes passage to put the audience and his character at ease but he then launches them off the edge as William Wilson spots himself standing in a mirror,
Faculty of Arts and Humanities Department of European Languages and Literature Rana Al-Ghalib 1700871 Short Story LANE – 615 Final Paper Schizophrenia and Poe Outline Abstract Schizophrenia Schizophrenia in The Life and Work of Poe Schizophrenia Represented in The Fall of The House of Usher Conclusion Abstract Edgar Alan Poe is one of the major contributors to the literary canon. He was allegedly suffering from a mental disorder. His own psyche was said to be an inspiration for many of his works.
Poe's narrator sees that he is a Master with good powers of observation.” There are some psychological issues with the narrator, there are instances where the narrator tells the reader if they think he is a mad man. “Why will you say I am mad” (Poe) the narrator is empathizing that as the reader, they are the ones who are wrong. The narrator believes that he is right; therefore, the heart beating and the eye watching him proves to him that he is not psychotic. While as the reader, they know that him murdering an innocent old man based upon his eye is in fact
While I can appreciate Thomas Peyser’s historical view on “William Wilson,” I believe the story corroborates the psychological perspective. “Poe’s William Wilson and the Nightmare of Equality” by Thomas Peyser offers a historical perspective on “William Wilson. A Tale.” He believes that “William Wilson” is a political allegory, rife with satire, illustrating Poe’s aversion to equality (Peyser 101) Peyser considers “Wilson’s account of his relations with his parents” to be an “allegorical rendering of the colonies’ revolt against a vacillating mother country riven by political strife” (101). He argues that William Wilson represents colonial America, and his “‘feeble and ill-directed’” parents assume the role of Great Britain (Peyser 101). Furthermore, he asserts that the semblance betwee...
The story is told through first person allow us see the a deeper insight into the working of the narrator’s mind, allow us to see the madness that pervades the narrator. Poe provides the context that suggest clearly that the narrator is in fact insane. In the beginning the narrator insist that, “TRUE! — NERVOUS — VERY, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”. (1) The beginning itself, indicates he is crazy due to the need of verifying his own sanity, and tries to convince us of his mental stability. Poe also shows this with the repetitiveness of the narrator’s speech pattern such as, “lantern cautiously-oh so cautiously--cautiously”. (1) All of his insanity is a derivation of the obsession that he wants to rid himself from; the evil eye that “vexed him” making him nervous and
In the case of Poe’s narrator, he showed symptom of paranoia He believed that his old room mate’s eye was evil.” One of his eyes resemble...
The Gothic dimensions of Poe’s fictional world offered him a way to explore the human mind in extreme situations, and so arriving at an essential truth. The Gothic theme of the importance of the intuitive and emotional and the rejection of the rational and intellectual is prevalent throughout The Raven, The Black Cat, and The Tell-Tale Heart. This is coupled with the convention of transgressive, encroaching insanity, ubiquitous in Gothic literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart, a kind of psychological doubling is achieved by the narrator- an identification with the old man at the time of disturbing him in the middle of the night, and a psychopathic detachment, evidenced by the feeling of triumph and elation that precedes the murder in the extract “..so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror”. Hysteria is pertinent in Gothic texts, an...
The narrator William isn 't the best person to people he 's a bully and by the other William coming in Poe is trying to show the narrator how he acts. William has an alter ego and by having another William in the story Poe is trying to help him understand his actions. The main example of self-loathing in William is throughout the whole story, instead of trying to understand the other William he is constantly arguing with him and doesn 't even realize he was in a fight with his own self. Evil plays a role in this story because of Williams’s actions throughout it. At the beginning of the story William is torturing a boy at school and continues to torture people throughout. Evil is also in this story by Poe there’s a certain evil to it that
(Poe 67)” Parents indulge him and listen to him all the time. No one has competed with him, “Thenceforward my voice was household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions. (Poe 67)” Unlike Thomas and Lucille in Crimson Peak, William Wilson was raised in a completely opposite way. He uses violence to deal with things as well in order to have people at school and in society listen to him. His dominant personality was caused by her dominant position at home, “In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural graduations, gave me an ascendancy overall not greatly older than myself. (Poe
... Poe clearly shows that the narrator is insane because he heard noises, which could not possibly have occurred. As the police officers were sitting and talking in the old man's chamber, the narrator becomes paranoid that the officers suspect him of murder. The narrator says, "I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer. " I felt that I must scream or die."
In “William Wilson”, Edgar Allan Poe teases his readers throughout the entirety of story with hints about its unexpectedly expected conclusion. Through figuratively-infused passages, Poe meticulously leads the reader to the front steps of the story’s ending without ever truly revealing the conclusion until the final sentences. Within those final sentences, the question of who the second William Wilson truly is, is answered, immediately transforming the story from a battle between two physical beings with both the same name and appearance into an internal battle staged within the mind of one man with conflicting desires. In order to create this dramatic and essential shift, Poe externalizes the protagonist’s internal struggle by blurring the
It is also a Doppelganger story, like Adelbert Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl" (in which Peter foolishly sells his shadow) and even more like Edgar A. Poe's "William Wilson" (in which the narrator is tormented by a schoolchum who looks and sounds exactly like him, and which ends much like Dorian Gray, with its more sinister overtones.
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest of intelligence,” Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is famous in the writing world and has written many amazing stories throughout his gloomy life. At a young age his parents died and he struggled with the abuse of drugs and alcohol. A great amount of work he created involves a character that suffers with a psychological problem or mental illness. Two famous stories that categorize Poe’s psychological perspective would be “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Both of these stories contain many similarities and differences of Poe’s psychological viewpoint.
In "The House of Poe", Richard Wilbur elucidates his criticisms of Poe 's work. He firstly comments on a critic 's purpose, then how Poe 's stories are all allegories. He then addresses the possible opposition to his argument, and then begins his discussion of the common themes in Poe 's writing and provides examples from his stories. This dissertation will analyze Wilbur 's criticism by cross referencing Poe 's work and how it exemplifies Wilbur 's assessment. There is a great deal of evidence to support Wilbur 's theories, but a close examination of each one will determine how legitimate his argument really is.
Does the narrator show weakness through this mental illness or is it a sophistical mind of a genius? This is the question that must be answered here. Throughout this discussion we will prove that the narrator is a man of a conscience mind and committed the crime of murder. Along with that we will expose Poe’s true significance of writing this short story, and how people were getting away with crime by justifying that they were insane.
Pruette, Lorine. “A Psycho-Analytical study of Edgar Allan Poe.” Ther American Jounal of Psychology.31.4 (1920): 370-402. University of Illinois Press. Web. 28 March 2014.