If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions. Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment;—the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual struggle.
Yet this superiority—even this equality—was in truth acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private.
He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner.
I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self—conceit assuming the vulgar airs of patronage and protection. Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson's conduct, conjoined with our identity of name, and the mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same day, which set afloat the notion that we were brothers, among the senior classes in the academy.
These do not usually inquire with much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have before said, or should have said, that Wilson was not, in the most remote degree, connected with my family. But assuredly if we had been brothers we must have been twins; for, after leaving Dr.
Bransby's, I casually learned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January, —and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that of my own nativity. 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. We had, to be sure, nearly every day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he, in some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritable dignity on his own, kept us always upon what are called "speaking terms," while there were many points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment which our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship.
It is difficult, indeed, to define, or even to describe, my real feelings towards him. They formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture;—some petulant animosity, which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, much fear, with a world of uneasy curiosity.
To the moralist it will be unnecessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were the most inseparable of companions. It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us, which turned all my attacks upon him, and they were many, either open or covert into the channel of banter or practical joke giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun rather than into a more serious and determined hostility.
But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease, would have been spared by any antagonist less at his wit's end than myself;—my rival had a weakness in the faucal or guttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a very low whisper.
Of this defect I did not fall to take what poor advantage lay in my power. Wilson's retaliations in kind were many; and there was one form of his practical wit that disturbed me beyond measure. How his sagacity first discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question I never could solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance.
I had always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were venom in my ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William Wilson came also to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its twofold repetition, who would be constantly in my presence, and whose concerns, in the ordinary routine of the school business, must inevitably, on account of the detestable coincidence, be often confounded with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance, moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were of the same age; but I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature.
I was galled, too, by the rumor touching a relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. In a word, nothing could more seriously disturb me, although I scrupulously concealed such disturbance, than any allusion to a similarity of mind, person, or condition existing between us. But, in truth, I had no reason to believe that with the exception of the matter of relationship, and in the case of Wilson himself, this similarity had ever been made a subject of comment, or even observed at all by our schoolfellows.
That he observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly as I, was apparent; but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be attributed, as I said before, to his more than ordinary penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect an imitation of myself, lay both in words and in actions; and most admirably did he play his part. My dress it was an easy matter to copy; my gait and general manner were, without difficulty, appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even my voice did not escape him. My louder tones were, of course, unattempted, but then the key, it was identical; and his singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my own.
How greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me, for it could not justly be termed a caricature, I will not now venture to describe. 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.
Satisfied with having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited.
That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, which in a painting is all the obtuse can see, gave but the full spirit of his original for my individual contemplation and chagrin.
I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward me, and of his frequent officious interference withy my will. This interference often took the ungracious character of advice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received it with a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years.
Yet, at this distant day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I can recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the side of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience; that his moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; and that I might, to—day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I less frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised.
As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme under his distasteful supervision, and daily resented more and more openly what I considered his intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the first years of our connexion 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.
Upon one occasion he saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or made a show of avoiding me. It was about the same period, if I remember aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in which he was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered, in his accent, his air, and general appearance, a something which first startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind dim visions of my earliest infancy—wild, confused and thronging memories of a time when memory herself was yet unborn.
I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago—some point of the past even infinitely remote.
The delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came; and I mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation I there held with my singular namesake. The huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several large chambers communicating with each other, where slept the greater number of the students. There were, however, as must necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly planned, many little nooks or recesses, the odds and ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of Dr.
Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories; although, being the merest closets, they were capable of accommodating but a single individual. One of these small apartments was occupied by Wilson. One night, about the close of my fifth year at the school, and immediately after the altercation just mentioned, finding every one wrapped in sleep, I arose from bed, and, lamp in hand, stole through a wilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival.
I had long been plotting one of those ill—natured pieces of practical wit at his expense in which I had hitherto been so uniformly unsuccessful. It was my intention, now, to put my scheme in operation, and I resolved to make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which I was imbued.
Having reached his closet, I noiselessly entered, leaving the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. I advanced a step, and listened to the sound of his tranquil breathing. Assured of his being asleep, I returned, took the light, and with it again approached the bed. Close curtains were around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, I slowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon the sleeper, and my eyes, at the same moment, upon his countenance.
I looked;—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these—these the lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were his, but I shook as if with a fit of the ague in fancying they were not.
What was there about them to confound me in this manner? I gazed;—while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts. Not thus he appeared—assuredly not thus—in the vivacity of his waking hours. The same name! 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?
Awe—stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again. After a lapse of some months, spent at home in mere idleness, I found myself a student at Eton.
Bransby's school, at Eton and Oxford, and on the Continent--who mimics all his actions. Finally, unable to escape his tiresome other self, he stabs him to death. Only then does he realize that he has destroyed his conscience, or the finer part of himself. He has become dead to the moral world and no longer has a meaningful existence. The story demonstrates Poe's dual impulses: to act destructively and to censure his own irrational behavior. Beyond that it contains signature aspects of Poe's writing, the building of atmosphere, suspense, and delineation of character through subtle and always important details.
This is one of Poe's finest tales, and has been recognized as such as can be seen through its influence on subsequent writers from Dostoevsky in The Double to Stevenson's Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. In the cinema Alfred Hitchcock's use of the doppelganger was magnificent. Poe's tale, like so many of his other works, may be the epitome of this type of tale. His appeal for sympathy sounds a lot like bargaining. And his confession that he has inherited an imaginative, active temper warns us to be weary of his story.
The fact that William can dominate his parents as a young child foretells future trouble. William recalls his school, in a misty, Gothic village with shadowy avenues and a haunting church bell.
He recalls the place with pleasure, but then says it's ridiculous for one so evil to take relief in memories. But because these memories are of such an important time in his development, William decides to indulge. The Gothic Style. The school house was surrounded by a thick wall. The children were permitted beyond the wall on Saturday and Sunday, when they paraded to church. Young William watches with wonder each time the reverend, who is also the principal of the school, steps up to the pulpit and assumes such a figure of authority.
The wall of the school was broken only by an impressive gate and its grounds were extensive and comprised of various nooks. The house itself is similarly winding and large, full of quaint crannies and illogical stories, so that one never felt quite at home. The school room was the largest room in the house and held several enclosures used by the principal and other fellows. This is where William spent his youth. He calls himself unusual, in that he remembers vividly even though there is little to remember.
The levels of remove from the man telling the story are many at this point, completely blurring the identity of the characters. It's as if William not only has a double in the other boy, but is now a double of himself.
Outwardly, William treats this rebellion with bravado, but he is scared of it, fearing that the ease with which his rival equals him signifies the other boy's superiority. Strangely, none of his other friends seem to notice the rivalry. Sometimes, an affectionate side to the battle can be detected, and William puts this down to a certain protectiveness and almost narcissism of a doppelganger. The fact that none of the other children notice the rivalry between William and his double shows how intimately the rivalry is connected to his own mental state.
That no one else notices the rivalry suggests that the rivalry might only exist in William's own mind; or it might even suggest that the double himself only exists in William's mind.
The narrator reveals that he shares so many details of life with the other William that some schoolmates, even older boys, talked about them, and gossiped that they were brothers. They were even born on exactly the same day. But despite the trouble that his doppelganger causes him, William has some kind of affection for him. They have daily fights in the school yard, but they always manage to remain on speaking terms.
But whatever it is, they are inseparable. Theirs is a more personal rivalry than one would expect from a pair of children, and the mix of hatred and love that they share shows that they are more closely connected than rivals. He plays practical jokes on his double that are sometimes violent. But there is one thing that causes the other William embarrassment: he cannot speak louder than a whisper.
This shadow-ness is further enhanced by the whisper that the other boy speaks in, and again that whisper suggests perhaps that the boy only exists in William's mind. William is embarrassed about his common last name. The fact that the other William shares it makes him even angrier, and whenever they are confused for each other, or he hears the name repeated, his anger grows. As the rivalry grows more and more severe, it becomes obvious how physically identical the boys are too.
Note how the rivalry seems to make the other boy more real, more similar. The rivalry, in some ways, seems to be what makes the other boy exist. William is worried that the older boys at school are talking about this relationship between the two boys, but there is no evidence to suggest they have noticed anything.
It is obvious that the second William has noticed their similarity too; William can tell because of how he uses it against him. The other William's favorite trick is to do an imitation of William, mimicking perfectly his dress, mannerisms, and, apart from the volume, his tone of voice. This imitation tortures William. The only consolation is that no one else seems to have noticed it. The doubleness of the two Williams becomes increasingly complicated.
Considering their already perfect symmetry, this new hobby must make it impossible to tell the boys apart. Another thing William hates is the way his double talks down to him, offering condescending advice, although he admits that the advice is not immature or misguided, and he knows that if he had followed some of it, he might be a happier man today. The narrator had thought that their rivalry was akin to friendship in a way, but now it is all hatred.
I soon found him of weak intellect, and, of course, marked him as a fitting subject for my skill. I frequently engaged him in play, and contrived, with a gambler's usual art, to let him win considerable sums, the more effectually to entangle him in my snares. At length, my schemes being ripe, I met him with the full intention that this meeting should be final and decisive at the chambers of a fellow-commoner, Mr.
Preston, equally intimate with both, but who, to do him justice, entertained not even a remote suspicion of my design. To give to this a better coloring, I had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself.
To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim. We had protracted our sitting far into the night, and I had at length effected the manoeuvre of getting Glendinning as my sole antagonist. The rest of the company, interested in the extent of our play, had abandoned their own cards, and were standing around us as spectators.
The parvenu , who had been induced by my artifices in the early part of the evening to drink deeply, now shuffled, dealt, or played, with a wild nervousness of manner for which his intoxication, I thought, might partially, but could not altogether account.
In a very short period he had become my debtor to a large amount, when, having taken a long draught of port, he did precisely what I had been coolly anticipating -- he proposed to double our already extravagant stakes. With a well-feigned show of reluctance, and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some angry words which gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I finally comply.
The result, of course, did but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils; in less than a single hour he had quadrupled his debt. For some time his countenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; but now, to my astonishment, I perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful.
I say to my astonishment. Glendinning had been represented to my eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as yet lost, although in themselves vast, could not, I supposed, very seriously annoy, much less so violently affect him. That he was overcome by the wine just swallowed, was the idea which most readily presented itself; and, rather with a view to the preservation of my own character in the eyes of my associates, than from any less interested motive, I was about to insist, peremptorily, upon a discontinuance of the play, when some expressions at my elbow from among the company, and an ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of Glendinning, gave me to understand that I had effected his total ruin under circumstances which, rendering him an object for the pity of all, should have protected him from the ill offices even of a fiend.
What now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say. The pitiable condition of my dupe had thrown an air of embarrassed gloom over all; and, for some moments, a profound and unbroken silence was maintained, during which I could not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glances of scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party.
I will even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary interruption which ensued.
The wide, heavy, folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered, of about my own height, and closely muffled in a cloak.
The darkness, however, was now total; and we could only feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any one of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into which this rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the intruder.
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 linings 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.
In ceasing, he at once departed, and as abruptly as he had entered. Can I -- shall I describe my sensations? Must I say that I felt all the horrors of the damned?
Most assuredly I had little time given for reflection. Many hands roughly seized me upon the spot, and lights were immediately reprocured. A search ensued. In this disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary, at the breadth of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor; while the gambler, cutting at the length, will, as certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in the records of the game.
Any outrageous burst of indignation upon this shameful discovery would have affected me less than the silent contempt, or the sarcastic composure with which it was received. Wilson," said our host, stooping to remove from beneath his feet an exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare furs, "Mr. Wilson, this is your property. Indeed we have had enough. You will see the necessity, I hope, of quitting Oxford -- at all events, of quitting, instantly, my chambers. The cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say.
Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I was fastidious , to a degree of absurd coxcombry , in matters of this frivolous nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that which he had picked up upon the floor, and near the folding doors of the apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror, that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm, where I had no doubt unwittingly placed it, and that the one presented me was but its exact counterpart in every particular.
The singular being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled, I remembered, in a cloak; and none had been worn at all by any of the members of our party with the exception of myself. Retaining some presence of mind, I took the one offered me by Preston, placed it, unnoticed, over my own, left the apartment with a resolute scowl of defiance, and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame. I fled in vain.
My evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation, and proved, indeed, that the exercise of its mysterious dominion had as yet only begun. Scarcely had I set foot in Paris ere I had fresh evidence of the detestable interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns. Years flew, while I experienced no relief. At Vienna, too, at Berlin, and at Moscow! Where, in truth, had I not bitter cause to curse him within my heart?
From his inscrutable tyranny did I at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain. And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, would I demand the questions "Who is he?
And now I scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of his impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little upon which to base a conjecture. It was noticeable, indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path, had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those actions, which, fully carried out, might have resulted in bitter mischief.
Poor justification this, in truth, for an authority so imperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so pertinaciously, so insultingly denied!
I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very long period of time, while scrupulously and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of apparel with myself, had so contrived it, in the execution of his varied interference with my will, that I saw not, at any moment, the features of his face.
Be Wilson what he might, this , at least, was but the veriest of affectation, or of folly. Could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my admonisher at Eton -- in the destroyer of my honor at Oxford -- in him who thwarted my ambition at Rome, my revenge in Paris, my passionate love at Naples, or what he falsely termed my avarice in Egypt -- that in this, my arch-enemy and evil genius, I could fail to recognise the William Wilson of my schoolboy days -- the namesake, the companion, the rival, the hated and dreaded rival at Dr.
Thus far I had succumbed to this imperious domination. The sentiments of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with which certain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me, had operated, hitherto, to impress me with an idea of my own utter helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterly reluctant submission to his will.
But, of late days, I had given myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to murmur -- to hesitate -- to resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that, with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution?
Be this as it may, I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to be enslaved. It was at Rome, during the carnival of , that I attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance.
The difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; for I was anxiously seeking, let me not say with what unworthy motive, the young, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into her presence.
At this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear. In a perfect whirlwind of wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar.
He was attired, as I had expected, like myself; wearing a large Spanish cloak, and a mask of black silk which entirely covered his features. Follow me, or I stab you where you stand," and I broke my way from the room into a small ante-chamber adjoining, dragging him unresistingly with me as I went.
Upon entering, I thrust him furiously from me. He staggered against the wall, while I closed the door with an oath, and commanded him to draw. He hesitated but for an instant; then, with a slight sigh, drew in silence, and put himself upon his defence. The contest was brief indeed. I was frantic with every species of wild excitement, and felt within my single arm the energy and the power of a multitude.
In a few seconds I forced him by sheer strength against the wainscoting , and thus, getting him at mercy, plunged my sword, with brute ferocity, repeatedly through and through his bosom. At this instant some person tried the latch of the door.
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