‘Double’ Trouble!
Have you ever had an imaginary twin or an imaginary friend? What would you do if you believed your imaginary twin had turned into a physical being and was interfering in your life every time you wanted to do something the twin found unacceptable and you didn’t? Would you begin to resent or hate your other self, your twin? If so, how would you get rid of the twin? What if you couldn’t get rid of the twin because you didn’t understand that he was only a product of your own mind? What if you didn’t realize you were insane?
In his story, William Wilson, Edgar Allen Poe uses characterization and symbolism to highlight the theme of insanity and the schizophrenia of the story’s narrator. He also uses those same elements to embody the classic struggle of good versus evil. William’s schizophrenia manifests itself in his psychotic symptoms of hallucinations and delusions. His hallucination is of an ‘imitation’ William, a good doppelganger that competes with his ‘real’ self and tries to keep him from vice. However, since William’s ‘real’ self thoroughly enjoys vice, the stage is set for the conflicts between good vs. evil within his psyche.
Poe’s tale opened with William attending a boarding school in England. While he attended the school, he ruled over his classmates with arrogance and enthusiasm. However, there was one boy William could not rule over and who was constantly competing with him in studies, sports, and games. He discovered that the boy had the same first and last names as himself and that they had both entered the school on the same day. Those coincidences, in addition to a physical resemblance between the two boys, led the other students to believe that the two were brothers. Later on, William discovered that he and what he calls the ‘imitation’ were born on the same day, January 19th, 1813. He also noted that, while the ‘imitation William’ copied his dress, gait, general manner, and even his voice, the ‘imitation William’ could only whisper. William also realized that only he seemed to notice the ‘imitation’ William. Finally, near the end of William’s fifth year at the school, he decided to play a practical joke on his twin-rival. He crept into the imitation William’s room and held the light up to the sleeping boy’s face. When the light rays fell upon his sleeping face, William was horrified to view his own features lying there. He left the room and the school, never to return.
William then enrolled at Eton. While at the school, he embraced a life of dissipation and vice. After he’d been attending Eton for three years, he invited the most dissolute students to a party in his chambers. At dawn, when the party was at its peak, a stranger violently opened the door of the apartment and demanded to speak with William. William went to the vestibule and the stranger impatiently grabbed William by the arm, whispering “William Wilson” into William’s ear. William speculated to himself on why the second William had returned to harass him. He also learned that a sudden accident in the second William’s family caused him to leave the first school on the same day that William had left. However, William soon stopped thinking about ‘the other William Wilson’ as he focused on his departure for Oxford.
While at Oxford, William became a card-cheat. He let other students win enough to believe they would continue to win, then he won their fortunes from them. One evening, as William was completing a scheme and ruining a fellow student in a card game of ecarte, a stranger in a cloak threw open the doors to the apartment, extinguishing every candle in the room. Before any of the students could recover from their surprise, the guest told them in a distinct whisper recognized instantly by William, “You are, beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of the person who has tonight won at ecarte a large sum of money from Lord Glendenning. I will therefore put you upon an expeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information. Please to examine, at your leisure, the inner lining of the cuff of his left sleeve, and the several little packages which may be found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper.” (12) The stranger abruptly left and, when William was searched, cards for cheating were found hidden in his sleeves. The host told him to leave his room and hoped that he would see the necessity of quitting Oxford.
The next morning, William fled in shame to the continent but found fresh evidence of the second William everywhere he ran to. Over the years, William ran from Paris to Rome, from Vienna to Berlin, from Moscow to Naples to Egypt. In each locale, the ‘good William’ thwarted his ambitions, his revenges, and his vices. William began to drink and nurture a desperate resolution to be free of the good William.
The final affront for William came when the ‘good William’ interrupted him yet again, this time as he was rushing to rendezvous with the wife of his host at a Carnival masquerade ball in Rome. William grabbed his double in a rage, dragged him into an antechamber of the ballroom, and challenged him to a duel. During the duel, he forced good William to the wall and repeatedly plunged his sword into him. William then saw a mirror he hadn’t noticed before, stepped up to it, and suddenly realized that it was himself he had murdered.
There are two main themes in this story. The foremost theme is that the narrator, William Wilson, suffers from insanity in the form of schizophrenia. Several passages in the story, as well as the overall effect of the characterization, support that William is schizophrenic. One of the first passages to foreshadow William’s mental illness is when he reveals that “ I had but one consolation – in the fact that the imitation, apparently, was noticed by myself alone, and that I had to endure only the knowing and strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself.” (6) Only William can see his ‘imitation twin’ because the ‘imaginary William’ is his hallucination. Poe also demonstrates William’s schizophrenic hallucinating more fully throughout the passages informing us that the ‘imitation William’ enrolled in school the same day as William, that they have the same birthday, and that they look just alike in height, build, and features. The most important passage supporting the theme of schizophrenia is the last passage of the story. William finally realized that the image he believed was of another living person, the ‘imitation’ William, was really a hallucination and that the ‘imitation’ was none other than William himself. William has been schizophrenic for years and a showdown between his sanity and insanity finally erupts.
The theme of William’s schizophrenia leads to a second, similar one – the good versus evil conflict within William and the necessity of both for his survival. William’s ‘bad’ side (the ‘real’ William) is in a constant struggle with his good side (the ‘imitation’ William), creating an ongoing conflict within him of good vs. evil. In the showdown that finally erupts between William’s sanity and his insanity, his good and his evil, we see that a fatal imbalance occurs when one entirely destroys the other.
Poe makes maximum use of characterization to further his central theme of insanity and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia, by definition, is having a “split mind” and the implication is that the sufferer has lost touch with reality. The prominent psychotic symptoms of the illness are delusions and hallucinations. Genetics contribute to the development of schizophrenia and William tells us, “I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character.” (2) He then tells us that his excitable character became more strongly developed as he grew older and that his friends were concerned about it. Finally, he informs us that “I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me.” (2)
The characterization continues with the choice of the narrator’s name, William Wilson. The doppelganger (or twin) name gives us one of the first hints that there are two parts to William. In Poe’s characterization of him, William’s schizophrenic hallucinations have created a physical entity of his good conscience. This ‘good’ entity battling against William’s enjoyment of vice sets the stage for conflict between the good and evil of his character throughout the story. When he was younger, he couldn’t bring himself to dislike the good William but he begins to like him less each time the good William competes with him or admonishes him. The more the good William interferes and offers advice, the more the ‘real’ William resents him. William mentions that “in the first years of our connection as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have been easily ripened into friendship; but, in the latter months of my residence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred.” (7)
Ultimately, the character of William comes to hate the good William and murders him. After the murder, we see William looking into his mind’s mirror and coming to the stunning realization that both the good William and the evil ‘real’ William are parts of himself and he can’t survive without both of them. He finally comprehends that, by killing a part of himself, he has murdered himself.
Symbolism is scattered throughout the story. The first small incidence is William’s equating his school, and its rules, with a prison. As we get to know William’s character, we understand he’s not only a ‘prisoner’ of the school, but is also imprisoned in his own insanity. The next symbolic occurrence is when William goes to the second William’s room and shines a lamp onto his face. He becomes terrified at seeing himself in the light of truth, saying “The same name! The same contour of person! The same day of arrival at the academy! And then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! Was it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility, that what I now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation?” (8) To hold something up under a light often signifies the truth being illuminated. William’s truth is that he saw himself in the second William and confronting his own insanity terrified him so much that he tried to flee from it. Poe uses light as a symbol once again when the stranger enters the room at Oxford. As the stranger throws open the doors to the card game, all the candles are extinguished. William has sunken into the depths of vice at that point and the light being extinguished can be symbolic of the death of hope for William’s good to overcome his evil.
The most symbolic elements of the story are in the final scene at a masquerade ball during Carnival. The Carnival setting is symbolic of corruption, depravity, licentiousness, and hidden identities. At a masquerade ball, all true identities, characters, and personalities are disguised behind masks and, when one is wearing a mask, one identity is revealed to the world while another identity is concealed under the mask. A mask-wearer may appear on the surface to be two different identities but it’s still only one person. William’s symbolic exterior mask of sanity conceals his true identity and character of being a schizophrenic. Also, William being costumed for the ball is symbolic of his disguising himself bodily as he always has mentally.
Finally, the duel at the end of the story symbolizes the final battle between good and evil, as well as the battle between William’s sanity and insanity. Evil and insanity win, but soon realize they can’t exist without their antitheses. William’s seeing his mortally wounded body reflected in the mirror is the primary symbolism of the entire story. His character and insanity are reflected back to him, and a mirror image can only reflect what actually exists. Only the person standing in front of the mirror is real, the reflection is not. In the same way, only William was real. The ‘imitation William’ was only a reflection of what was inside William the whole time. He acknowledges this as he stares into the mirror and hears William Wilson’s voice saying “You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead – dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.” (15)
Since Poe uses characterization and symbolism to support his themes, the story seems to be simply a story about insanity and about good versus evil. However, Poe may also have written this story as a catharsis for himself. Poe’s foster father disowned him (cast him out) and, in the opening paragraph of the story, William calls himself an outcast. William’s character talks about being descended from a race of those with imaginative and easily excitable temperaments. Poe’s birth mother was an actress and they were considered imaginative, easily excitable, and passionate. Poe, like William, had problems with drinking and gambling. He obviously identified with William’s character since he even gave William his own month and day of birth, January 19, albeit four years earlier than Poe’s own. Poe, like William, also attended school in England at one point in his life. Another possibility is that Poe may have wished that his foster father had been an unwavering conscience for him, as he made the ‘imitation’ William be for the ‘real’ William, instead of disowning him and abandoning him to his vices.
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. “William Wilson” Online Posting. 3 March 2003
URL: <http://www.pambytes.com/poe/stories/william_wilson.html>