William Wilson Weaknesses

Throughout the lives of many people, most struggle with the weakness of their self identity. Edgar Allen Poe incorporates the challenge that a person’s greatest weakness is themselves in his short story “William Wilson.” Poe’s story follows the journey of a narrator who initially goes by William Wilson and his endurance through a troubling childhood. The narrator is depicted as a child prodigy who outshines his entire class. It soon comes to the attention of the narrator that a character also named William Wilson began attending school on the same day. This William Wilson is invisible to the class but is depicted as the enemy of the narrator. Over time, William Wilson haunts the narrator until the narrator kills himself in an attempt to stop

The narrator alludes to the fact that William Wilson is exactly like him in every way. Although the narrator views Wilson as his classmate and his enemy, the narrator explains that William Wilson was “acknowledged by no one but [himself]” (Poe). Even though Wilson is the narrator’s rival, William Wilson is unseen by the class, suggesting that the narrator struggles internally with himself. In addition, the narrator adds the point that William Wilson’s “competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with [the narrator’s] purposes, were not more pointed than private” (Poe). The narrator endures the torment and haunting of William Wilson privately, making it apparent that Wilson is somewhat connected to the narrator. Poe intentionally includes evidence that the narrator and William Wilson are one in the beginning of the story in order to portray the theme that a person’s greatest weakness is

Wilson continued to appear every time the narrator sinned, and finally after multiple attempts to escape the narrator finally settled down in Rome. While in Rome, the narrator finds himself at a masquerade ball. He plans to steal the Duke’s wife, therefore triggering William Wilson to appear. When Wilson appears, the narrator stabs Wilson in the chest to try to stop his enemy. When the narrator stabbed Willaim Wilson, the room began to change and “a large mirror…now stood where none had been perceptible before; and as [the narrator] stepped up to it in extremity of terror, [his] own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced, with a feeble and tottering gait to meet [him]” (Poe). In an attempt to stab Wilson, the narrator stabs himself, indicating that William Wilson was inside of the narrator all along. After the narrator stabbed himself, Wilson begins to speak, but the narrator pronounces that it was himself that was speaking. William Wilson says, “In me didst [the narrator] exist - and, in my death, see by this image which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself” (Poe). William Wilson’s words solidify the fact that the narrator and him were one and that Wilson was indeed the narrator’s greatest weakness, himself. Edgar Allen Poe connects Wilson and the narrator at the end