Poe's Use of Doubles in Dream States
             Doublings 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 wall was not consumed in flames. On that wall was a perfect image of the cat he hung. He reasons that during the fire
             the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber...The falling of the other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture. (Poe 1991: 111)
             This is not a realistic explanation for something truly uncanny that has happened. Yet the narrator accepts this explanation since there is no realistic alternative. Things often make ...