Internal Struggle In William Wilson

Many of Poe’s stories have the characters suffer through internal struggle by assuming alternate and opposite personalities contrary to who they really are. In “William Wilson,” this struggle takes shape in the narrator’s imagined self, who follows him all throughout Europe. The enemy threatens the narrator’s sense of a coherent self because he shows that it is inescapable for him to avoid his ugly characteristics. The narrator uses this alter self to separate from his insanity. He projects onto his alter self and is able to release the trouble that resides within him. The alter self-becomes a rival of the person because its resemblance to the person is undeniable. Suicide directly comes from the ideal that the alter self is something that