I am writing an essay, which is due in about 20 hours (I am almost finished, just struggling) and don't quite understand it. My thesis is
Doppelgangers have been used for hundreds of years to show how a person can have a good and evil half. If the two halves meet, it can have catastrophic results. Sigmund Freud says that “The phenomenon of the ‘double,’ . . . Appears in every shape and in every degree of development” (3). Some of the biggest stories that use this are “William Wilson”, “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “Markheim”, written by Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson, respectively. Stevenson even says that “The individual will not only think double and perhaps act double, but the ideas of his double thinking and doing will be inconsistent and incompatible—he will be literally distracted” (194).
does anyone understand it enough to help me?
EDIT: I am not asking anyone to write my essay.
I'm not clear on your initial premise, as different sources will describe the term differently, from an evil twin to a body double. I'm inclined to accept the latter definition, because who's to say, assuming that you're the original, that you're not the evil one? How would the existence of a body double, or doppelganger, delineate one's good half from their evil half? If it's carbon copy of you, and you are both good and evil, how is the double not also a mix of the two? Sounds like you've picked a very difficult puzzle to solve and I wish you luck.
Reminds me of the Native American parable of the two wolves:
A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle.
One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear.
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather quietly replies, “The one you feed.”
Plausible deniability and accountability, if you feel like you have an out you take it, in essence to the nature of man.
It’s similar to the concept of changelings too, in that the soul can’t be mimicked but the flesh can. Though that was more of a way to primitively understand autism and mental illness manifesting in toddlers.
The key is not to defeat one or the other, but to learn to live with both
Okay you're approaching it as an archetype, either psychologically or literarily.
It's worthwhile to include the mythological aspect of the idea as part of its formation as a social archetype or as etymological origin. Should at least be good for a few lines of 'let's stretch this an extra page.'
I always wrote the paper that said what i wanted to say, and then spent many hours adding in a paragraph here or a line here. That way you're only WRITING writing for about 8 or 9 hours, and the other several hours are spent integrating evidence and supporting statements from cited sources in layers. It helps break up the hours on concentration into a series of more manageable 20 minute - 1 hour tasks, while also allowing you to edit on the fly and rearrange as needed. I wrote a lot of papers the night they were due.
It's metaphorical. In an original Star Trek episode, Kirk is split into two, his good side and his bad, which in reality, isn't prone to happen. The conflict is when the two sides meet and how the conflict is resolved, which can be typically messy. The isn't necessarily an intent to resolve the differences, rather, it's just an examination of where it can go.
"The Enemy Within" ... a classic original series episode. But what's important to glean from the story, in my view, isn't so much a Jekyll and Hyde tale about good vs. bad as it is about passivity vs. aggression, indecision vs. action, weakness vs. strength, etc. Each half is necessary for our existence, and only when the two polar opposites are present do we have a balanced individual.