The Nature of the Doppelganger in Edgar Allan Poe‘s "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Abstract

Humanity has always been in search for an identity: to discover who we really are or who we think we are. This uncertainty is rooted in the unconscious, a world difficult to explore. Firstly, this project proves that not only Edgar Allan Poe made use of his creative mind, but the author also delved into his own mental activities and traumatic experiences to design those stories and characters. To demonstrate this, Marie Bonaparte‘s The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho Analytic Interpretation will be thoughtfully studied. It is essential to consider Otto Rank‘s notion of the double as the subject of study and going further by focusing on Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung‘s viewpoints, among others. Secondly, the aim of this paper is to unbury the unconscious by studying the myth of the doppelganger in Poe‘s tales: "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" by following different psychoanalytical theories. Finally, this article determines that Poe‘s real purpose was probably to demonstrate the fragmentation of the psyche of human nature as depicted in some of his heroes.