Compare And Contrast Fight Club And William Wilson

William Wilson and Fight Club: A Comparison

A thrilling short story, “William Wilson” (1839) is a chronicle narrator as he coexists with a “double”, a man with eerily similar features and contours as the narrator. It is revealed at the end of the story that the double is an actually a split personality of the narrator. The story, although short, explores the sudden and violent turn of events when the narrator confronts the doppelganger during the schizoid reality. The struggle of the narrator in “William Wilson” can be seen in the movie named “Fight Club” (1999); the movie contains plot development with striking resemblances to Poe’s literature.

We examine “William Wilson” in segmented intervals. The narrator begins his story by establishing a mood of suspense and confusion, as he is near

death. He recounts his life from the beginning of childhood, noting that he attended a school that was enclosed in a “prison-like rampart” (22), where he met a student of similar personality and figure; they even share the same name. Their relationship worsened after a long period of mutual respect when the two students compete to be the leader within the school. A violent altercation between the duos sends the narrator to another school, where he began to develop alcoholism to forget about the “double”. However, a cloaked figure visits the narrator and reminds him of the “double” from his early years. The narrator, shocked, moves yet to another city, where he begins to gamble and con, but was cut short by another unwelcome visit by the cloaked man. The mysterious cloaked man persists around Europe, finally ending in Italy, where the narrator is seeking the young wife of a duke. The narrator, upon capturing the cloaked man, erupts in a frenzied anger kills the cloaked figure, only to find out that he killed himself; the bleeding man the narrator saw was actually a reflection of himself in the mirror.
Poe’s short story can be seen as a precursor in terms of ideology for the movie “Fight Club”.

“Fight Club”, a movie narrated in first person, shows the interaction of the main character and his alter ego. The struggle to control the body is a recurring theme in both “William Wilson” and “Fight Club”. In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the narrator follows a downward path of vice as he ages. His unruly temperament from a young age, described as “imaginative…and easily excitable” (23), set the tracks for chaos and injury. In the various stages of moral degradation, the double attempts to rectify the narrator’s mind. In three occasions, the double, dressed in a cloak, provokes the narrator by saying “William Wilson” and leaves. The first occasion marks the first step toward vice, when the narrator begins to drink heavily to forget; the second occasion was marked by the cloaked man’s attempt to stop short the narrator from conning a wealthy lord; lastly, the cloaked man intercepts the narrator’s attempt to commit adultery with the young wife of a Roman duke. The confrontation turned violent, and the narrator self-afflicts a mortal wound, killing the alter ego (double) as well as

himself.
In this story, the two consciousness struggle to mold the actions of the living flesh. The narrator, while loud, aggressive, arrogant, coexists with a split personality of moral righteousness, which constantly interferes with the narrator’s vices. The suicide at the end of the story signifies a victory for the vice, and a death for the virtue, for the narrator kills his double. But the true victor is the narrator’s doppelganger, because he caused the death of the narrator, and ultimately ended the streak of sins.
Similarly, the struggle of the main character in “Fight Club” was the possession of the body. Two different minds, one destructive and the other lawful, battle to affect the actions of the living flesh. The main character of “Fight Club controls” the body when he is awake; when he is asleep, the alter ego emerges and builds an empire of loyal men to destroy buildings in the financial district. The movies proceeds to show the journey of the main character as he tries to outwit his alter ego. In the end of the movie, the main character decides to stop the rampage of his alter ego by shooting himself in the head, effectively killing the alter ego, but wounding himself in the process. These endings underscore the tragedy of schizophrenia and the struggles that entail the condition. Even though the plot of the two works are similar, the ending differ in term of the victor vs the defeat. In “William Wilson”, the victory belongs to the double, who successfully killed the original narrator to prevent further vices. On the other hand, the victor in “Fight Club” is the consciousness of the main character, who killed his alter ego in an attempt to stop the destruction of the financial district. In both Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” and the movie “Fight Club”, the recurring theme of the struggle of a schizophrenic can be observed.