“Ligeia” is a short story of darkness, tragedy, and love by, famous writer, Edgar Allan Poe. The story ventures into the mind and point of view of a widower, the narrator, who recently lost his first wife, became a wealthy man, and becomes addicted to drugs. He then goes to get married again, but he is not satisfied nor happy. He cannot get his mind off Ligeia. This story is quite dark throughout. Also to add to the suspense and terror the whole story is written in the first person point of view. Poe also does not mention the protagonist’s full name like in all of his other stories (need citation). The story seems like a supernatural tale throughout since Ligeia hunts the narrator and ends up killing his second wife to reincarnate in her body.…show more content… She believes that the narrator being a widower, and the narrator “displaying poor reality testing and loose boundaries and functions” make the story nothing more than a psychological one (citation here). In her interpretation, “it is the will of the narrator expressed through his fantasy, which is enhanced by…opium…that brings [Ligeia] back to life” (citation here). She feels as though the “malfunctioning” of the narrator is the hearth of the story (citation here). She first bases her idea on that of antecedents in the childhood of Poe. She believes that maybe the loss of his mother at an early age might of had an impact of him portraying Ligea as the “image of the good mother”, and Rowena as a “rejecting mother” (citation here). She explains how the narrator and Ligeia are not in a relationship, making the narrator “take from Ligeia, but also seeks to go beyond the natural boundaries that exist between all individuals…to merge with her” (citation here). After, she explains how “the narrator’s hatred of Rowena” makes him believe an entity, obviously Ligeia, kills his wife even though he was already wishing for this to happen (citation here). Finally, she explains how the line, “If this I saw- not so Rowena”, adds to the feeling of a psychological story rather than a supernatural (citation here). She feels that the narrator does not want to say who replaces Rowena’s face because she feels the opium and the…show more content… The story might seem like a straight-forward story but it is more than that. To begin, the narrator has several lapses about Ligeia’s background. The narrator cannot remember “how, when, or even precisely where” he met Ligeia for the first time (Poe 174). He also mentions that he “never [knew] the paternal name of [Ligeia]” (Poe 175). The reason the narrator cannot remember all these things is because he is trying to make her into someone that is real. The narrator can only describe Ligeia’s facial and body features but not her background. A lot of paragraphs are spent on her beauty by adding exquisite details. The narrator describes Ligeia as having black hair, delicate nose, and white teeth. The more the narrator describes her the more she becomes unrealistic for her to be a human being. He says some things like her eyes being “larger than ordinary” or “gazelle eyes,” and finally “divine orbs” (Poe 176-177). Also, for some odd reason, he describes how she moved, “came and departed as a shadow” (Poe 176). This is just inhumanly possible making it more believable than this is nothing more than a fantasy. If this is not enough, just before Ligeia’s death the narrator explains how she acknowledges how much she loves him. This is remotely weird because nowhere before her death the narrator states that she even loved him, and the narrator himself finds out he has something for her as well
