Poe's Stories brief biography of edgar allan poe
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Short Story By Flannery OConnor
| Ligeia’s eyes are an important symbol of the story, because they provide a warning sign of the supernatural, superstitious side of the narrator. Whenever Ligeia’s eyes appear in the story, the narrator is under a kind of spell – they fascinate him. Their unnatural size and the way they swell and fill with a superhuman passion put Ligeia into an unknown category, somewhere beyond the other characters, somewhere beyond human. Whether she truly was beyond human, or become so in the narrator’s mind after the grief of her death affected him, is not entirely clear. The narrator of "Ligeia" describes the feeling of almost remembering something, which he thinks is one of the most thrilling human feelings. He has felt this way about the expression of Ligeia’s eyes. Sometimes an image will come to his mind that is an exact analogy for the effect that Ligeia’s eyes have on him. Things like running water and moths, the faces of very elderly people, and particular stars, inspire him to remember Ligeia. Ligeia has a strange effect on the narrator’s mind. His memory of her is made up of ethereal qualities that are neither human nor inhuman. The objects and animals and heavenly bodies that she inspires give her an otherworldly, larger than life character that looms over the narrator and the story. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com ©2017 LitCharts LLC www.LitCharts.com Page 19 The narrator of "Ligeia" has also been reminded of Ligeia by music and literature, and a certain book in particular by Joseph Glanville. He gives a quote from this volume, which is also the story’s epigram, about the power of the will and how God himself is a will. He has only found the connection between this passage and Ligeia after lots of contemplation, but now he believes it is something about her intensity. He describes how she is outwardly calm but has outbursts of temper like no other, and at these moments, her large eyes became huge and her voice took on a melodious, powerful energy. The connection of Ligeia to the divine gives her a power not just over the narrator but over his whole world. She becomes larger than a human character and transforms into abstract concepts like energy and will. Giving his wife this power and comparing her to a goddess on one hand shows the depth of his love. At the same time, it’s unclear if these traits of Ligeia’s were real, or are rather products of the narrator’s own overpowering sense of loss at her death. It is possible, in fact, to see Ligeia as a kind of embodiment of grief—calm, with outbursts of powerful energy. Poe’s triumph in the story is to have Ligeia be both—both a kind of supernatural being and potentially enhanced by the narrator’s grief-filled memories. The narrator of "Ligeia" tells us that Ligeia was also very educated – she read all the time and knew many languages fluently. He has never known such knowledge in a woman and can find no fault in her intelligence, which thrills him to remember. She studied metaphysics and seemed so superior to him in her knowledge that he let her guide him and felt the scope of his knowledge expanding. Poe gives Ligeia not only a physically intimidating character but also an intellectual superiority over the narrator, so that she becomes a kind of ultimate figure, both lover, mother and teacher. So when Ligeia dies, the narrator of "Ligeia" is left alone, without both his teacher and wife. He is like a lost child. As illness took her strength away, she read less and her once wild eyes grew dim. The narrator knew that she was about to die and struggled to reckon with this truth. Shockingly to him, Ligeia also struggles to think of death, and her visible terror as she lies on her deathbed is unbearable to watch. Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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