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Introduction

Edgar Allan Poe always believed in reason, which is able to save humanity from the tragic contradictions of being. Therefore, Poe’s heightened attention to psychology was largely determined by his desire to discover the essence of forces that impede the normal and full-fledged work of consciousness. The detective nature of each story written by Poe also included the study of personality and the transfer of character traits to real killers, whose actions could be explained by the split personality. Therefore, based on the fact that Poe presented the detective genre, the psychology of a criminal maniac who commits a crime without any rational sense but with the dual mind became the main focus in the stories "The Black Cat" and "William Wilson".

Good and Evil

The narrator in Edgar Po's stories tends to have a special internal energy that borders on mental illness. Thus, each character possesses such features that can be a subject of psychological analysis. The narrator of "The Black Cat" talks about love for his wife and his pet, who later became his victims. Although Poe simultaneously introduces rational motivation, the hero of the story “The Black Cat” admits that his brain was poisoned by alcohol, as a result of which his mental health and temper suffered. Hence, in "The Black Cat, when the narrator begins to repent of his cruelty, he finds a cat in the tavern. At first, the narrator treats the cat in a really friendly way, but it does not last long. He feels its presence constantly as if reminding him of evil and goodness united in this animal. The writer sees a certain relationship between the two opposing states of love and hate, which can easily develop into one another. The stories of Poe are mostly written in the first person, where the main character is also the narrator who tells about the committed crime. Each of the storytellers analyzes and motivates his actions. He is interested in the psychological consequences of maniacal obsession and those caches of the human psyche, where the "devil of perversion" lives. On the other hand, the storyteller in "William Wilson" reveals to the readers that he hates his twin for always being better than him, preventing him from enjoying life and disclosing all his adventures. Consequently, William Wilson feels a mystical fear of that man and, therefore, of himself because readers understand that his opponent was a hallucination, and in fact, the hero was fighting with himself.

Narrator and His Evil Twin

The special mental anomaly of a split personality can be found in many Poe’s stories, especially in the narrator’s character. His story is usually based on a traditional couple in the romantic prose, namely the narrator and the protagonist. The former personifies the moral and psychological norm, while the hero is usually a deviation. However, often in Poe's writings, the narrator and the hero are one and the same person, in which both the norm and the deviation are embodied; thus, the narration acquires the feature of self-observation. The ability to find hidden signs of good or evil is the main theme of story expressed through the characters and personalization of the storyteller (Rohr 456). This duality is a technique common in romanticism used by the writer deliberately. In different stories, the extent of consciousness duality is different. In some stories, it is barely felt, while in others, it is seen more clearly. Hence, it is fully demonstrated in the story “William Wilson”, where the degree of duality is so high that two types of consciousness no longer fit in one character, and each requires an independent physical design. A novel of Poe “William Wilson” is a story about a man pursued by a twin. In this narrative, such as in “The Black Cat”, the narrator is a virtue. He tries to somehow justify the actions of the twin and talks about all sorts of reasons for persecution. Nevertheless, Poe does not show whether this twin is a human being in the natural body or whether the author offers the readers a certain parable, in which the twin is just a part of the hero’s personality, that is, a kind of embodiment of his conscience.

Death in the Narrators’ Lives

The twin motif permeates both of Edgar Po's stories, especially drawing attention to an evil twin who tries to convince a good twin of the correctness of his actions. In the plots unfolded by Poe, the twin foreshadowing death turns into a twin, which comes with death. This twin appears next to the hero from the very beginning, accompanies him throughout his life and, in the end, destroys him. However, duality is developed and consciously cultivated: Wilson the second imitates Wilson the first in gestures, manner, and behavior trying to emulate him. Notwithstanding, William Wilson's duality is not based on love but rather rejection and hatred. Thus, this is a system of two poles that are pushing away and attracting at the same time. The dualism of life and death may also be a characteristic of animals, as it is in the story “The Black Cat”, where the cat is immured in a wall but remains alive and gives voice from there thereby revealing the wife’s killer. However, there is no woman whose love gives rise to the appearance of the twin. In this way, Poe builds a system of “female” and “male” dualism. Women twins appear on the basis of their relations with the third person - a man. By contrast, the male twins are connected only with each other. In the stories that use the idea of a double, the concept of will is one of the possible explanations for the fact that the deceased had a twin. In this regard, the will allowed him to overcome death and come to life again.

Additionally, the motives of duality and life after death have the greatest literary and mythological history. These motives reveal the features of Poe’s creativity using constant references to the vertical context and the reader's familiarity with the texts. However, Poe always taught his audience to separate good from evil. While the person who describes events in “The Black Cat" is the criminal who kills his family, William Wilson aims at understanding what his twin is trying to do. The completely implausible similarity of two characters indicates that William Wilson and his twin are the same individual that has developed the common consciousness. The first one is a good person, and the second one is a bad person. Therefore, this feature is always present in Poe’s narrators who live their life making mistakes.

Conclusion

In summary, the two narrators under analysis talk about themselves. The split personality and the unreality of the victory of good in the stories have different causes. Nevertheless, both narrators seek to resist evil. The story "William Wilson" is about a person fighting with his own conscience and killing it slowly. Thus, when he finally kills it, his personality, which is based on a combination of evil and good principles, is destroyed. Just as in “The Black Cat", a bad personality can win because he always has certain motives and ways of influencing the human mind. However, crimes may be committed by the real person either consciously or unconsciously. Narrators of these stories have all the reasons to be convicted by the society but they also have their unconscious will to separate good and evil in their minds.