Poe's use of doubles in dreams
Poe's Use of Doubles in Dream StatesDoublings and feelings of de ja vu exist in life everywhere. Yet when coincidences become too much to believe, one questions if the experience is really happening or if it is a dream. In "The Black Cat" and "William Wilson", Poe uses doubling to illustrate the dream-like state in which these stories take place. William Wilson's double is also named William Wilson. The two Wilsons meet as children in school. Each time Wilson found something else about the other Wilson that resembled himself, he became angrier. He realized "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." (Poe 309) Wilson believed the double was purposely imitating him. The double wore the same clothing as Wilson. He also imitated Wilson's walk and speech. The double, however, could not speak above a whisper. Yet Wilson and his double were, otherwise, exactly alike in appearance. "The Black Cat" has more subtle instances of doubling. The night the narrator kills the first black cat he owned there is a fire in the man's house. When he returns to the ruins of his home, he finds only one
He is woken up from sleep so it is unsure if what he sees is reality or part of a dream. He recalls going to school in a large "Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England" (Poe 301). Wilson even mentions the school was "a dream-like and spirit-soothing place" (Poe 302). The third instance of doubling is the small mark of white hair on the second cat's chest. This adds to the dream-like quality of the story. Like in The Black Cat, the state of intoxication makes the story seem fuzzy and less believable. When the double leaves, he leaves behind the cloak and Wilson realizes they are exactly the same. In these lines of the story, Poe adds to the dream-like quality of the story by making the narrator extremely intoxicated. Yet when they reach into the realm of the uncanny, as Poe's characters experience, it is difficult to decide what is reality and what is a dream. This also adds to the dream-state the narrator is always in. Yet after he had the cat for some time, he realized "it was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name - and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared - it was now, I say, the image of a hideous - of a ghastly thing - of the GALLOWS!" (Poe 1991:112-113) This resemblance to the gallows is a doubling of the way the narrator murdered the first cat. After the narrator kills the cat by hanging it from a tree, there is a fire in his house that evening. He cuts out the eye of the cat yet in the morning, "when reason returned" (Poe 109), he experienced some regret but soon he "drowned in wine all memory of the deed" (Poe 109).
Common topics in this essay:
Black Cat,
William Wilson,
GALLOWS Poe,
Wilson Wilsons,
England Poe,
Dream Doublings,
black cat,
Wilson Poe,
william wilson,
William Wilson's,
poe 109,
deed poe 109,
dream-like quality story,
memory deed poe,
eye cat,
wine memory,
drowned wine,
drowned wine memory,
school wilson,
wine memory deed,
cat missing,
wilson's double,
memory deed,
|
Acceptance Essays
