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Summary
At the beginning of the story the narrator who is called William Wilson admits that he has comitted a lot of terrible crimes during the last few years. He wants to write them down because he feels that he will have to die. He confesses that he became a victim of temptation. His earliest memories are about his schoollife in a secluded village in England.
At the boarding school he attended he met a schoolmate, who had the same name, was born the same day, who had the same looks and similar habits, but wasn`t related to him. The narrator was held in high regard by everybody except his double. He opposed him and didn`t believe in his heroic adventures. All the other pupils didn`t notice the strange relationship between the two Wilsons, but slowly the narrator began to be afraid of his \"enemy\". That`s why the intensive bond soon turned into hatred. The double started to imitate the narrator, he copied his behaviour and his clothing, even his voice was similar. The narrator realized that he had met the wrong Wilson before but he couldn`t remember at which occasion. At the end of the fifth year at boarding schoolhe wanted to play a malicious trick on his double and sneaked into his room but a few minutes later he left again because the sleeping Wilson`s face looked excactly the same like his own one, so that he believed to see himself lying on the bed. After this horrible experience he left the boarding school with panic, to forget the awful and confusing happenings.
He changed to the university of Eton, where he soon became addicted to alcohol and gambling. One evening, when he was already drunk the door of his room was opened and William Wilson entered the room, wearing the same suit like the narrator. Before he even realized what was happening his double vanished again after having whispered the words \"William Wilson\". From now on his double appeared whenever the \"real \" Wilson found himself in difficult situations, whenever he was about to make a mistake. But his double always disappeared quickly so that he wasn`t able to get any detailed information about him. Afterwards the narrator spent two years at Oxford university. One evening he tried to deceive a young and rich student. When the freshman had lost all his money and the narrator was at the top of his glory the wrong Wilson came into the room and accused the gambler of fraud. Banished from the university, mortified by the students the narrator left England - but in vain! Years passed by, Wilson followed him everywhere and prevented him from his criminal plans. In Rome at the time of the \"Carneval\" he tried to win the duchess´ heart but within the crowd he saw a costume that could`ve been his own. Full of anger he grabbed his double, towed him to another room and demanded a duel. The fight was short, with rage he stabbed Wilson down with his sword. Suddenly someone asked for entry. To avoid interference the winner turned around to lock the door. When he looked at his opponent again he caught sight of his own pale and bloody face. It was his double, trying to defeat death, his body and his features were exactly the same. The man in agony no longer whispered but spoke in the voice of a winner:
\"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead - dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist - and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.\"
Introduction
William Wilson is one of the most impressing stories of Edgar Allan Poe. It was published in 1840 in the book \"Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque\". This \"double-story\" is masterly composed but contains many problems. It seems that it is no story that has been written very fast but very well compsed and reconsidered. It contains many biographic elements. It is interesting that Poe worked out many elements of parapsychology which in his times were completely unknown. Today, psychology has experienced the role a \"double\" plays but it is astonishing that Poe got nearly the same result although he had no medical or psychological education.
\"William Wilson\" was often considered as an \"autobiographical-story\" and it`s true that the author has included many experiences of his youth times. His lucky student-years in Englandv have impressed him very much but we also can see that has newer outgrown his disinheritance by John Allen.
The Raven
Summary
A lonely man tries to ease his \"sorrow for the lost Lenore,\" by distracting his mind with old books of \"forgotten lore.\" He is interrupted while he is \"nearly napping,\" by a \"tapping on his chamber door.\" As he opens up the door, he finds \"darkness there and nothing more.\" Into the darkness he whispers, \"Lenore,\" hoping his lost love had come back, but all that could be heard was \"an echo that murmured back the word \'Lenore!\'\"
With a burning soul, the man returns to his chamber, and this time he can hear a tapping at the window lattice. The raven perched on the bust of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology, above his chamber door.
The man asks the Raven for his name, and surprisingly it answers, and croaks \"Nevermore.\" The man knows that the bird does not speak from wisdom, but has been taught by \"some unhappy master,\" and that the word \"nevermore\" is its only \"stock and store.\"
The man welcomes the raven, and is afraid that the raven will be gone in the morning, \"as his Hopes have flown before\"; however, the raven answers, \"Nevermore.\" The man smiled, and pulled up a chair, interested in what the raven \"meant in croaking, 'Nevermore.'\" The chair, where Lenore once sat, brought back painful memories. The man, who knows the irrational nature in the raven's speech, still cannot help but ask the raven questions. Since the narrator is aware that the raven only knows one word, he can anticipate the bird\'s responses. \"Is there balm in Gilead?\" - \"Nevermore.\" Can Lenore be found in paradise? - \"Nevermore.\" \"Take thy form from off my door!\" - \"Nevermore.\" Finally the man gives in, realizing that to continue this dialogue would be pointless. And his \"soul from out that shadow\" that the raven throws on the floor, \"Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!\"
Introduction
In this poem, one of the most famous American poems ever, Poe uses several symbols to take the poem to a higher level. The most obvious symbol is, of course, the raven itself. When Poe had decided to use a refrain that repeated the word \"nevermore,\" he found that it would be most effective if he used a non-reasoning creature to utter the word. In \"The Raven\" it is important that the answers to the questions are already known, to illustrate the self-torture to which the narrator exposes himself. This way of interpreting signs that do not bear a real meaning, is \"one of the most profound impulses of human nature\"
Poe had an extensive vocabulary, which is obvious to the readers of both his poetry as well as his fiction. Sometimes this meant introducing words that were not commonly used. In \"The Raven,\" the use of ancient and poetic language seems appropriate, since the poem is about a man spending most of his time with books of \"forgotten lore.\"
The Black Cat
Summary
A lover of domestic animals, the narrator had had many differnt pets and had lived comfortably in a house with his pets and his wife. Soon, mostly because of the negative effects of alcohol, he began to despise the pets. Previously his favorite, a large black cat named Pluto eventually copied and seemed to mock the narrator so much that the narrator gouged out its eye and hung the cat. That night his house burned down and left a perfect bas relief of a cat with a noose around its neck in the one unburnt piece of plaster in the house. Soon the author wanted company of another cat and found one identical to Pluto, save for a large white patch of hair on its chest. The white patch eventually transformed from an nondescript patch to a gallows as the narrator again becomes increasingly loathful of the cat. One day the cat triped the narrator in the cellar, and the narrator brandishing an axe, swung it to kill the cat. His wife blocked the blow; and, in a rage, the narrator planted the axe in her skull. He walled up his wife in the cellar and, and without the disappeared cat to bother him, finally had a good night\'s sleep--even with the murder on his mind. Police came to investigate but they found nothing. They came back four days after the murder and the narrator took them to the exact place where he had killed his wife. While he is bragging to the police about the solidity of the walls in which his wife is entombed, a loud shriek alerts the police to something behind the wall. The narrator had walled up his cat along with his dead wife.
Introduction
\"\'The Black Cat\' is one of the most powerful of Poe\'s stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust\". Poe constructed this story in such a way that the events of the tale remain somewhat ambiguous. As the narrator begins to recount the occurrences that \"...have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed him,\" he reminds the reader that maybe \"...some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than [his] own,\" will perceive \"...nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.\"
\"The Black Cat\" is Poe\'s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt (the first being \"The Tell-Tale Heart\"); however, this story does not deal with premeditated murder. The reader is told that the narrator appears to be a happily married man, who has always been exceedingly kind and gentle.
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