payment page
Schools
The story follows the narrator’s education through three different stages of his schooling, at Dr. Bransby’s Academy, Eton, and Oxford. While a character may be expected to mature and improve as they proceed through their education, the narrator only disintegrates. Interestingly, alongside the narrator’s moral dissolution, each of the three schools successively offers less education and more freedom. Dr. Bransby’s has an almost prison-like atmosphere, being surrounded by a wall with iron spikes. The students adhere to a strict schedule and have little freedom. Here, the narrator does dominate his classmates, but it does not appear to go to an extreme. However, at Eton, the narrator describes being able to avoid teachers and staff and hence to “elude the vigilance of the institution.” This situation enables him to drink and play cards with his classmates all night. At Oxford, the narrator doesn’t even mention institutional checks on his activity, and accordingly speaks only of gambling and nothing of schoolwork. His behavior at Oxford is also markedly crueler than it was at previous schools. The motif of schools turns the progressive “novel of education” narrative on its head, instead showing how the narrator deteriorates the more schooling he gets.
Fleeing
The narrator spends most of the story running from his doppelganger, his voice of conscience. He first leaves Dr. Bransby’s Academy after seeing that Wilson indeed has the exact same face. Wilson’s revelation of the narrator’s gambling scheme causes him to run in shame and disgrace, not only from Oxford but also from England. From there, the narrator describes a wild chase throughout the world, repeating the words “I fled in vain” over and over. In each place, the narrator attempts to commit some sort of act that can be roughly categorized within the biblical seven deadly sins. He has prideful ambitions in Rome, wrathful vengeance in Paris, a lustful tryst in Naples, and some scheme of greedy avarice in Egypt. Wilson follows him at every turn. This pattern of futile escape highlights the inextricable connection between the narrator and his doppelganger. Wilson, identical to the narrator but for the pitch of his voice and the morality of his judgment, is part of the narrator—the voice of his conscience. He cannot truly escape the part of him that knows his actions are wrong.
