WILLIAM WILSON by Edgar Allan Poe

Read WILLIAM WILSON then answer the questions:

1. Match these halves of sentences to make a paragraph of seven sentences:

1. The narrator had to leave Oxford for Europe …
2. But in every city that he visited …
3. When he had evil plans, …
4. At first the narrator obeyed Wilson’s orders, …
5. This made him feel brave and strong…
6. At last, at a party in Rome, the narrator took his sword…
7. But when he looked at his enemy’s face, …
8. the other Wilson stopped them.
9. because everyone knew that he was a cheat at cards.
10. he saw that it was the same as his own.
11. and he thught that he culd break away from his enemy.
12. the other William Wilson appeared.
13. and killed the other man.
14. but he began drinking heavily.

2 . Here are four passages from Wilson’s diary. Complete them with the words below (use each word once), and then say who wrote each passage – the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ Wilson.

1. I no longer play cards. I am known to be a __________, which is no better than a _____________. Once, what I tried to win a lot of money, I was ____________ and told to leave oxford at once. But the man that I tried to ____________ was saved.

2. At Oxford I was a clever and successful ____________. It was an easy way to ____________money. I used special ____________, which I hid inside my ____________. I only played with ____________ people, but sadly, one day I was caught, and so had to leave England.

3. Tonight the Duke Di Broglio’s ____________has agreed to meet me in a room ____________ we can be alone. She is young, beautiful, and not very ____________ - and tonight she will be ____________! I shall fight anybody who tries to ____________ me.

4. I spend my life searching for ____________. Tonight I have planned a ____________ meeting with the Duke’s wife. She is beautiful, but not clever ____________ to recognize an ____________ man when she sees one. Somebody ____________ warn her about me.

3. Who or what, was the other William Wilson? Explain your answer.

1. A real person – who happens to look just like the narrator

2. a different part of the narrator’s own mind

3. somebody that the narrator imagines, in a waking dream

4. the good side of the narrator’s character

5. a kind of ghost