How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. (2)
Why does the narrator feel remorse if he has murdered his conscience?
Quote #2
[…] although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least, tempted before (1)
William is trying to get off the hook for the terrible deeds he committed.
Quote #3
Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon—even much of the outre. (11)
What does William’s unusual upbringing have to do with the person he has become?
Quote #4
His moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; (22)
This passage suggests that the second William Wilson is in fact the first William’s conscience.
Quote #5
I might, to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I less frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised. (22)
What has William learned that allows him this enlightened form of retrospect?
Quote #6
As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme under his distasteful supervision, and daily resented more and more openly what I considered his intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the first years of our connexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have been easily ripened into friendship: but, in the latter months of my residence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. (23)
What changes occur in the young William Wilson that cause him to alter his feelings toward his double?