Dark Characters of Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example

William Wilson Edgar Allen Poe is one of history’s most famous and is known for his first person, dark characters. He is also known for his deranged and mentally unstable characters that exist in many of his stories, such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado.”  By putting the darker character in the position of the narrator, he is essentially recruiting the reader to join in his ideas and their justification. “William Wilson” can be seen as a deliberate attempt by Poe to portray a sympathetic reading of an inherently evil character. Poe often intended to create this opposition between his narrators and the antagonist. This is the case in William Wilson where the two Wilsons are polar opposites. One cannot dispel the idea that the protagonist and the antagonist are the very same person. In addition, Poe’s narrators often make numerous attempts to convince the readers that they are not like their enemy, or the victim which they seek to kill. In the case the narrator functions as the eyes of the reader, and the narrator makes it clear that he and his opponent are in no way alike on the inside, even though they are in the superficial sense. By creating dual Wilsons with opposing personalities, Poe illustrated the duality of all people and the constant struggle of people’s inherently evil tendencies and their conscience. The first portion of this short story focuses a great deal on description of the narrator’s early “school-life,” and one cannot help but feel as though the narrator is trying fervently to gain the reader’s permission or even approval prior to what is to come. It is almost a foreboding: “I would not if I could, here or today, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime” (555). The narrator reminds us of his “unspeakable misery” which we later learn is due to a “good” influence in his life that he despises. By reminding the reader of how “miserable” he was at the time, he gains our sympathy. The narrator seeks to deliver an explanation as to his reasons for ultimately murdering the other Wilson, and he does so to gain sympathy from the reader. We then find that the narrator is in fact calling himself William Wilson, but this is also the name of the story’s opposite to the narrator; the second Wilson serves as the sort of good twin to the narrator’s evil presence. The narrator describes the contrast of the two Wilsons as being different in personality but physically, being so similar that they share the same birthday. According to Frank and Migistrale, the idea of duality is pervasive throughout the piece: “The narrator is of course the first of two characters named William Wilson. He recalls in the beginning of the piece the annoying presence in his life of a mysterious twin or exact physical double who has haunted him since his school days.” The word “haunting” is used to describe the second Wilson in relationship to the first Wilson which causes one to think of an evil kind of presence. It is ironic that the first Wilson who is the “bad” Wilson is actually being “haunted” by a “good” version of himself. There is a constant and looming evil that blends into the narrator’s sense of self. The antagonist is the narrator, the self of the story that Poe writes. In the tale of “William Wilson,” this duality is perhaps even more apparent than in other works by Poe. The fact that the narrator shares a name, birthday and physical appearance of his old childhood nemesis is of no coincidence. Wilson, as he describes himself, “grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices” (555), and says that his “parents could do little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me” (556). The reader is clearly left to wonder if the narrator is not simply having some sort of split personality episode. The Wilson that is doing the narrating is naturally the evil Wilson while the Wilson that is being described to us by the narrator is the “guardian angel” version of Wilson. The fact that the narrator is essentially evil by nature makes the opposite and the second Wilson a nuisance to the “bad” Wilson.  What makes the reader question whether there are two separate tangible Wilsons as opposed to a dueling personality Wilson is statements such as “It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson, and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself to hate him altogether” (558). It is interesting that the second Wilson was such a bother to the narrating Wilson, yet Wilson claims to not be able to bring himself to hate him. This is particularly odd as Wilson is not good in nature and therefore would not have the nature to find anything but hate within himself for the conviction of the second Wilson’s presence. Patrick Labriola claims that the second Wilson acts throughout the story as the conscience of the narrating Wilson: “The second Wilson constantly calls him to account, warns him against his evil ways and always seems to appear to interfere with his perverse pleasures at the critical moment of attainment.” Ultimately, the narrating, Wilson conquers his opposing good counterpart by “killing” him. At the end of the story, we are given a certain confirmation of the idea of “dueling” self as Wilson and the second Wilson are in Rome, and Wilson stabs the second Wilson. As the second Wilson is dying, the good Wilson exclaims: “how utterly thou hast murdered thyself!” (2002). We see that the two Wilsons were really one and the same the entire time. As we have followed Wilson through all of his struggles, the reader is left questioning whether or not Wilson’s actions were justified. Perhaps we were just supposed to question this, and that is enough to make Poe’s point. Even questioning this act shows us our own tendencies to justify our “evil” actions. In looking at this work, it is necessary to look at both Wilsons in order to clearly understand the duality of both Poe and his work. The fact that the same name is given in this piece to both the narrator and the enemy of the narrator is simply too obvious to not be a prime example of duality. The synergistic yet opposite nature of the two Wilsons convinces the reader that the second Wilson is without a doubt the actual conscience of Wilson: “It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking” (567). There is no other way to describe “William Wilson,” other than as the mirror and opposite images of the same person. Ultimately, the narrator is forced to kill his conscience. Some criticism about this piece deals with an even deeper aspect of duality or the idea of Wilson and Wilson as the same. In fact, Theron Britt claims that it is the protagonist Wilson going up against society at the time that the piece was written: A genuinely historical reading of this tale begins with Wilson’s struggle to maintain him as a singular identity and recognizes the main focus of the story as a psychological or moral one of ‘conscience’. However, though the struggle with ‘conscience’ remains as a crucial element of the tale the psychological and moral identity it raises cannot exist in an historical vacuum; instead an historicized reading of the tale acknowledges it psychological themes but relates them to the social tensions of Poe’s society. This critic is drawing a line through the idea of the simplicity of duality and giving this piece a larger more historical meaning. This is an interesting theory but not a likely possibility. It is possible to attribute too much to a piece, and saying that this piece was a work of social commentary is quite a stretch. The idea of Poe illustrating a struggle to free his protagonist from society seems too elaborate. Britt goes on to write: “Published in 1839, William Wilson appeared a time of great political and social turmoil during an economic depression and near a low point in American national politics; a fact perhaps linked to Poe’s often noted pessimism concerning democracy.” The rebuttal to this statement is that many great and historical writers have written widely during similar circumstances but not necessarily about the political condition of things at the time. This is a story of internal struggles, separated from the outside world. He was too concerned with the internal life in this story to be concerned with problems as big as societal and social problems. It would stand to reason that if the underlying idea behind the piece was one of social disturbance, there would have been a stronger emphasis placed on a role reversal in which the good Wilson were actually the bad Wilson and vice versa.  Poe attempts to get the reader to identify with the bad Wilson in order to show us that no person is perfect, and that it is possible to justify anything in one’s own mind. With this justification comes the knowledge that the capability to commit evil is possible by anyone, and Poe has shown this to us by making us feel sympathy for the evil side of a person. In considering duality as symbolic in “William Wilson,” it can be argued in the final paragraphs of the story that Wilson the narrator kills part of himself or of the second Wilson: “He commits an act of ultimately self directed aggression” (Kennedy). He is killing his conscience so to speak, attempting to prove to the reader that he was in the right. On the surface, it may appear he is killing someone else, but the truth behind what is really taking place is exposed in the end when the “good” Wilson exclaims “You have conquered, and I yield!”(567). He then tells the “bad” Wilson that the bad Wilson has murdered himself by doing this, which we are meant to take as his conscience. The evil inherent in Wilson has won over the Wilson representing the conscience, and perhaps the reader, while maybe not rooting the evil in Wilson, has come to a full understanding about how the event took place. In many ways you are very close to having a good paper here, but so far you lack a solid thesis. If you can theorize as to what this Wilson/Wilson conflict is about (avoiding the biographical reading), you will have a more directed thesis statement. Is it the belief that a conscience is not really intrinsic to an individual? An attempt to draw the reader into a sympathetic appreciation of evil? You would be better off presenting the critics’ ideas that you disagree with, such as the political approach, and then presenting and carefully supporting your own. Here you would make use of the ideas and statements of critics you agree with, as well as evidence from the text, one thing that you don’t have enough of here. This actually wouldn’t be much trouble to reorganize and focus. You certainly need to fix your in-text citations and your works cited list (MLA), as well as use more of the story itself as support. This is interesting to read, and shows a thoughtful approach. It is still rough, though. 80 –this grade is temporary, and is meant to reflect the amount of work you have left to do. It will be replaced by the final paper grade if significant improvement occurs. Works Cited: Bloom, Harold, The Tales of Poe, Broomhall, Pennsylvania, Chelsea House Publishers,1987. Britt, Theron, “The Common Property of the Mob: Democracy and Identity in Poe’s ‘William Wilson,’” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 48, 1995. Questia Online Library, 08.03.02. Fredricks, Frank, Migistrale, Anthony, Poe Encyclopedia, Westport, Connecticut-London, Greenwood Press, 1997. Kennedy, J. Gerald, 1996, “The Violence of Melancholy: Poe Against Himself.” American Library of History, vol. 8, 1996. Questia Online Library, 08.03.02. Labriola, Patrick, “Edgar Allen Poe and E.T.A Hoffman: The Double in William Wilson and The Devil’s Elixir,” International Fiction Review, 2002. Questia Online Library, 08.03.02. Poe, Edgar A., The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe. Edison, NJ, Castle Books, 2002. Read More