Research paper

RESEARCH PAPER

ABSTRACT: This research paper discuss a story “William Wilson” written by Edgar Allan Poe.This story is described where the main character is shadowed from his early school yearsby his doppelganger,who shares his name end birth date and who challenges him from the outset by achieving as much as the narrator but seemingly without effort.

“William Wilson” explorer the theme of the ghostly double. Poe’s inspiration for the story was the horror on feels when dscovering another person shares your name. In this story, this horror is magnified by the exact identical appearance age and manner of the double.

KEY WORDS:Democracy,psychology, Mr.Glending,sweetnes, playground, palace,plain, strangeness,dered, schoolfellow, likeness,sharpness,tremble,humanly,nervousness, frightened, secret, weakened, hurried, firmly, sword, wildly.

INTRODUCTION:”William Wilson” was first published in October 1839 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. The storyis written by Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer famous for his work’s of short fiction and of poetry, both in the horror genre.

The reason of this story was written before two years ago King told CBS News how his book was inspired by Poe’s psychological drama abour doppelganger:’’The guy is at chool, another guy comes to chool who looks just like him , dresses like him, and has the same name,’’ king said.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)- American poet, short story writer,and critic who is best known for his tales

Of ratiocination, his fantastical horror stories, and his genre founding detective stories.Poe whose cloudy personal life is a virtual legend, considered himself primarily a poet. William Wilson- a tale about a man’s struggle with his conscience –an allegory in which William Wilson meets William Wilson, his mirror image, and spends the rest of his life trying to avoid him.

He was written many stories. His stories are very important, very interesting, and stories’ main ideas are very- very good.

For example his notable works:

“The Fall of the House of Usher”

“The Purloined Letter”

“The Tell- Tale Heart”

“The Black Cat”

“The Raven”

“The Cask of Amontilldo”

“MS.Found in a Bottle”

“The Pit and the Pendulum”

“Tamerlane, and other poems”

Many scholars call him the” architect” of the modern short story.

Poe wrote not only horror stories, but also short stories resembling detective stories and science fiction.

Poe was the son of the Englishborn actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, an actor from Baltimore.

Poe’s wife, Virginia, died in January1847. The following year he went to Providence, Rhode Island ,to woo Sarah Helen, a poet. There was a brief engagement.

In 1839 a contract for a monthly feature stimulated him to write “William Wilson” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” stories of supernatural horror.

The SETTING of “William Wilson” is semi- autobiographical and relates to Poe’s residence in England as a boy.The”misty-looking village of England”of the story is Stoke Newington, now a suburb on the London. The school is based on the Manor House School in Stoke Newington which Poe attended from 1817 to1820.

The setting changing of this story is actually a great structuring device.Eacg segment of the story takes place in a different, specific location. We start at Dr. Bransby’s school, where William meets his double, then moves to Eton where he preforms some wrongdoing then finally Oxford where he encounters even more wrongdoing and experiences more doppelganger action. Doppelganger means ghostly double . The transition to Italy marks our movement into the segment of the story, in which offs his double. Poe is know for his melodramatic prose. But”William Wilson”is one of the stories that is surprisingly cheese-free.This might be because the story is about issue of conscience and morality rather than the usual blood and gore.

Gentlemen, you are , beyond doubt, uniformed of the person who has to-night won at your leisure, the inner linings of the cuff of his left sleeve.Poe uses this theme to show the other side of each person, the moral(mind) and physical(bady). In this piece he portrays the part of our will the form of another physical body

Characters:William Wilson (narrator)-The narrator in this story is the chief protagonist. His name as given is, as he states, a pseudonym. William Wilson – The fellow student and rival of the narrator.

As our narrator , main character,and ,oh, yes, only significant character, William Wilson is the clear protagonist.We are invested in his story.

Story’s narrator doesn’t disclose his rival’s real name- which, as mentioned in the above entry, he wishes to keep secret because of the scorn it invites. Conseqquently, the narrator gives his rival the same fictitious name he gave himself, William Wilson.

The name that the narrator assigns himself , knoving that his real name is detestable. The narrator was once a confident, sociable child, able to dominate the playground.but over the course of the story he loses his confidence, turns to drinking, then to gambling , attemos to financially ruin a man who considers him a friend, and to having affaurs with married women. He blames his fall on a mysterious double, who shares nearly every attribute with him – name,birthday, appearance- with the exception of their voice .

ANALYSES: His doppelganger speaks only in a whisper. The narrator ultimately runs from his doppelganger, and in his flight stoops to ever greater levels of degration. The doppelganger appears at these lowest moments revealing the narrator’s weaknesses, crimes, and sins, and the seemingly suoernatural doppelganger begins to seem like perhaps the narrator’s own conscience. Ultimately, the narrator attacks his doppelganger, and in doing so kills himself.Wilson said that” Let me call myself, for the present ,Willam Wilson.

The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn –for the horror the detestation.The facets of the rival Williams character that differ from the narrator’s character are interesting to collect. The whispering voice is one example, and here’s another, the fact that the rival William sleeps in a closet instead of a normal bedroom, as if he has been hidden away.Poe cleverly uses our expectations for more and more doppelganger details and surprices us with the even more horrible idea of finding one’s doppelganger transformed. And William’s own horror suggests , even as he hates his doppalganger how much he has come to rely on it being his doppelganger. The main character is an unnamed narrator. He tells his story of the dreadful William Wilson. William Wilson is the student that the narrator first meets that questions his superiority over his classmates. Dr.Bransbby is the priest of alocal church ad also the principal of the school the narrator first attends. Glendinning is the student whom the narrator plans to cheat in a gambling game.

This story is consists of four parts. The narrator gives himself the nema of William Wilson because he does not want to his name to sully the page. He does not discuss his later evil deeds and chooses instead to tell the story of how he became wicked suddenly rather than slowly in the way of most men. He is close to dying and longs for someone to sympathize with him and acknowledge the extent of his fall. From his family he has inherited an excitable disposition.

As a child William is temperamental and selfish. His parents unable to control him, and wishes. William goes to school in a large prison like Elizabethan house in a soothing quiet old village that is marked by an eroded Gothic steeple. The house old and very irregular. The boys except on Saturday afternoos, when they walk in the nerby fields and on Sundays when they go to the church. The pastor Dr.Bransby, is also the principal of their school, and tha narrator notes contrast between his dual roles as begin strict administrator.The narrator remembers his childhood vividly although very little of interst actually occurred.

DISCUSSION PART:All people have known of course ,

Every people’s idea various. So people opinion differ from each other.

William Wilson sees and hears his demon as if it were a real porson. In his struggle against himself and loses by winning. Poe well understood that the human mind can turn against itself.In my opinion the protagonist begins the story in the present by describing his temperament and background, then flashes back to his school days. Because he appears de mented, he must be classed as an unreliable narrator.

Protagonist: The narrator

Antogonist: The imagened Rival(The really narrator) or a doppelganger, a Ghostly Double

Narrator(William Wilson): protagonist, a mentally disturbed man who says he is near death. He has assumed a fictitious name,William Wilson, because his real name is reviled. He tells a story that began he was a schoolboy. His purpose is to gain a modicum of sympathy from the reader because, he says , he evil deeds arose from circumstance beyond his control.

Narrator’s(Willlam Wilson): Person who closely resembles the narrator physically, has the same birthday as the narrator, an has the same name as the narrator . The narrator does not disclose his rival’s real name because doing so would reveal his own birth name- which , as mentioned in the above entry , he wishes to keep secret because of the scorn it invites. Consequently, the narrator gives his rival the same fictitious name he gave himself, William Wilson. The rival is apparently a figment of the narrator’sdiseased imagination or, if the reader regards the story as a tale of the paranormal, the rival could be regarded as a doppelganger ghost who is the double of a living person.Rev.Dr. Bransby: Principal of the school that the narrator attends and minister of the local church. Poe appears to have based this character on the Rev. John Bransby, who was headmasterof the school Poe attended while living I n England as a boy.

Mr. Preston: Oxford student who hosts a party attended bbby the narrator and other students.

Glendinning: Oxford student who loses a large sum of money to the narrator in a card game at the party hosted by Mr.Preston.

Eton students : Boys who attend a secret party given by the narrator