"This isn't fair! How can you tell who's sane and who's insane?" "Well, we have a very simple method."

"Whoever has that stamp on his hand is insane."

I first started writing this post arguing that William Wilson could be just as easily sane as insane. That the decision was a difficult one to make. However, as I attempted to list the reasons why he could be seen as insane, I became more and more persuaded that that was the case.

 I am now convinced that Poe's William Wilson is little more than the ramblings of a madman, with Wilson`s doppelganger little more than a figment of his imagination. And when he sees himself in the mirror at the end, pale and covered in blood, he is merely hallucinating. 

After all, he'd been hallucinating the whole time. His doppelganger is said not only to share the same name as him, but to be the same age and "born on the nineteenth of January" (216), to have "entered the school upon the same day" (216) and to even be "the same height, and... singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature."(217) All of this is a monumental coincidence. But even more amazing is the fact that the doppelganger takes on Wilson's own face when he is sleeping. From there, he follows William first around Britain and then the world, from Paris to Egypt, "[destroying his] honor", "[thwarting his] ambition", and his "bitter mischief" (224). It would take an unbelievably persistent person to trot around the globe with the only goal of tormenting someone. 

However, this person must exist in some capacity. After all, he is seen by Wilson's schoolmates, who "had the notion that [they] were brothers", as well as the members of the card game, who search his jacket upon advice from the doppelganger. So if this doppelganger is indeed a figment of Wilson's imagination, how was he seen by classmates and gamblers alike? Simple. The people who played roles did indeed exist, but what Wilson saw was only his own projection on to them. Wilson even says that "the imitation, apparently, was noticed by myself alone"(217). There may have been a boy at the school who greatly resembled William Wilson, perhaps even one who looked a little like him and shared the same talents, but the doppelganger who follows him from that first school is one of his own making. 

It is also telling that when Wilson encounters his doppelganger, the other's face is obscured somehow. During the card game, the candles are extinguished, and the room is shrouded in darkness. The party, "could only feel that he was standing in [their] midst." (222) During the masquerade, his face is "entirely covered" (225) in black silk. In both instances, he is only identified by his "ever remembered, low, damnable whisper" (224). Whatever scenario is actually taking place, William is experiencing it with added auditory hallucinations.

These hallucinations eventually become visual as well, as seen at the masquerade. During the party, no one actually lays a hand on, or whispers to, William. It is at this point that his insanity has become full-fledged. He drags his doppelganger into the next room before attacking and killing him. But alas, when William turns back to the body, he sees only a mirror, and his own bloody visage staring back at him. At this point, he is still hallucinating. He has not stabbed himself, or anyone else. He simply thinks he has.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Something did die during that encounter. William's conscience. For that was what the doppelganger stood for. He may have been entirely imagined in a physical sense, but he still existed in William's mind.  A conscience that attempted to intervene when William was up to no good. The sole guard against "serious disquietude to [his] friends and positive injury to [himself]."(213). By proving that he is capable of murder, he has forever silenced it and has damned himself to death. Not immediately, as the image in the mirror would suggest, but sooner or later, now that his conscience is not there to protect him.