Edgar Allan Poe: Narrative Structure in “Ligeia” Essay

Known for his flowing descriptive and gothic style, Edgar Allan Poe does not appear to develop any obvious write up structure in his work. His short stories are gener whole in ally identified with the gloomy, desolate, and horrifically disgraceful sensations they spark within the reader. Particularly in his short humbug, Ligeia, Poe seems to have make away with any sort of apparent structure within the story. Rather, he portrays it as a mixture of somewhat chronological events combined with the cast thoughts from the eccentric mind of the teller. However, narrative structure lies beyond the simple storyline of plot and bath be revealed within many other elements of a story. In Ligeia, the elements of composing and repeating play an important role in developing and maintaining its narrative structure.In particular, Poe seems to stress one hobbyingly repeat quote, as it appears four times throughout the story. Man doth not cave in him to the angels, nor unto cobblers las t utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble volition (1, 1, 4, 7). From the continual emphasis of this quotation, there arises a principle notion of a emphasis among the predominant themes of keep and remainder. Furthermore, this notion constitutes the backbone of the story from which all other recognizable themes subsequently branch from. The themes of death, guilt, life sentence, and opium the factor that questions the lustiness of all provide recognizable markers to the overriding theme of the tension mingled with life and death within Ligeia.The pervading theme of death fills Poes physical composition and creates an omnipresent atmosphere of dark apprehension. The movement of the text incessantly alludes to the coming(prenominal) death of Ligeia. All the familiar characteristics of her person (her wildly effulgent eyes, her interest in the vote counters stu bankrupts) gradually fade away in Poes description of her illness. Andnow those eyes shone less an d less much upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill (5). The death of Ligeia renders her husband completely disoriented and continually longing for her. Without Ligeia I was but as a nestling groping benighted (5). This fruitless despair and misery thus sets the dance step of irresolution for the rest of the story.Furthermore, it also adds to the structure of the narrative by confirm the life and death tension. By juxtaposing this feeling of continual yearning with the appal and irony of the necromancing of Ligeia, the surprise ending of the story is shape up emphasized. This motif of unhealthiness and death again reappears as the Lady Rowena waterfall deathly ill. regular of his depressing style, Poe creates a more terrible and incurable sickness for the instant wife. Her illnesses were of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians (9). chronic to accentuate the horror and angst of death, Poe describes the corpse of Lady Rowena vividly. The lips became doubly shriveled and emaciated up in the ghastly expression of death a outrageous clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the sur grammatical case of the body and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. (11)This slow anti-climactic death continues to the go for hopes of the narrator and the reader fluctuating, maintaining the feeling of unresolve. The anxiety exhibited within the irresolution of death therefore supports the structural theme of the tension between life and death.A more subtly conveyed theme, guilt, continues this trend of unease. This self-blame originates from the narrators subconscious green-eyed monster of Ligeias intellectual superiority. She maintains the leadership in their marriage. The narrator obviously adores her and is highly aware of her intellectual vividness over him. Proclaiming that she maintains unquestionable subordination of knowledge, the narrator un intentionally develops this jealousy. The intellectual acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding (4). He seems to conceal a slight fretfulness of her scholarly dominance. This receives noticeable as he presents that he renders himself a chela incomparison to her authority. I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance (4).With a certain bitterness, he by and by repeats, Have I ever found Ligeia at fault? (4) It can even be implied that after the narrator r distributivelyes the limits of her knowledge, he most pull up stakess her death. organism so caught up with learning worlds of information through her guidance, he is fantastically disappointed when he discovers a boundary to this freely give wisdom. From these implied feelings of jealousy and disappointment, he understandably feels incredible guilt and remorse after her death. This could be one of the reasons he obsesses over her death. Beca custom of these circumstances, the resulting unsettled atmosphere of tension reinforces the tension of Ligeias death.Challenging the despondency of death, the immeasurable will of life finally overcomes death, thus breaking the tensions between the two. Ligeia provides the source for this will. Her fight with death portrays her strength of character most effectively. The narrator continually emphasizes her spirit with repetition of words. lyric are impotent to convey any just idea of the force of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. In the intensity of her wild desire for life -for life but for life bold mine solace and reason were alike the uttermost flakiness (5). As Ligeia repeats her famous quote (Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will (7)) in two ways before dying, her resolute determination not to give herself to death proves undeniable. Her repetition of this quote could be thought to signify that she can only die if she resigns herself to be weak and feeble that she will return to life because her will to live surpasses death itself. It could also be thought of as Ligeias last request to her husband telling him that if his will is strong enough, he can bring her back to life. Whether or not the narrator understands what she says, he acts accordingly.Never does he forget Ligeia or stop thinking of her. touch perception that he needs to fill the void that Ligeia left, he quickly marries the undermentioned available woman, Lady Rowena. While comparing Ligeia to his second wife, however, he becomes further embittered and his will for Ligeia to return to life becomes more fanatical. He admits of Rowena, I loathed her with ahatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back to Ligeia, the darling the august, the beautiful, the entombed (9). At times, Ligeias desire for life combines with his yearning for her and the prophecy almost becomes real. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. as if I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned upon the earth (9). Immediately after this line is mentioned, Lady Rowena becomes ill with a sudden illness. The narrator, perhaps unconsciously, seems to be meddling with the connection between life and death.During Rowenas many fluctuations between life and death, it becomes obvious that the narrators thoughts are controlling the state of his current wife. As he concentrates on attending her and watching her closely, she falls back into death. As he reminisces about Ligeia, however, the corpse becomes alive again. superstar may suspect that Rowena has died days ago and the glimmer that is Ligeia returns only when the narrator wills it. Ligeias final transformation into the living ends the novel with a bang. later all the narrators lament and yearning for Ligeia to live again, his reception is one more of horror than of happiness as he call aloud (13) after his discovery. Perhaps because of his guilty conscience, the narrator responds with fear of her sort of than love and he is finally forced to come face to face with his guilt. Consequently, this will to conquer death confronts the tensions between life and death mind on and thus shattering them.The final major theme diffuse the plot, opium use, questions the validity of the narrators notices much(prenominal) as reviving the dead. non so subtle hints to the narrators opium use fill the narrative. He admits numerous times to having used the drug and that it affects his mind. After suffering the pain in the neck and loss of losing his love, the narrator resorts to opium to blur the sharp reality of this anguish. I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloration from my dreams (7). Furthermore, when he describes seeing the ghost of Ligeia and the drops of red fluid in the wine, he questions his state of mind several times. But I was wild with the upthrust of an immoderate does of opium I considered the circumstance to have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, bythe opium italics mine, and by the hour (10).Before his vision of the living Ligeia, there are at least three specific references to the narrator having used opium the page before. Consequently, his account is definitely questionable. In addition, the accounts the mysterious noises and visions of Rowena can also be questioned as it was common to give opium to those suffering from Tuberculosis (which is what was Rowena was hypothesized to have). The narrators opium use could be part of the source of tension so prevalent in this story. Because of his constant dream-like state, it is probable he creates tensions that are not there such as believing he can control the state of Ligeia (causing her death, impulsive her back to lifeetc.). Of course, it is a lso possible that Ligeia never did return to life and he had fallen into another opium dream. The numerous opium references diffused throughout Ligeia deepen the narrative structure by adding the element of doubt to the narrators account.These major elements from Ligeia, death, guilt, life, and opium use, directly reinforce the main structural element prop the narrative together, the life vs. death tension. All four complement each other as well for without one, the other ones would not be complete. Without the pervading theme of death, the will to overcome death would not be as shocking. Without the realisation of the opium usage, the story might be taken literally and simply pinned batch as a surreal fantasy. With the knowledge that the story is told through the misty veil of opium, however, the possibility exists that the there exists no supernatural elements at all and only a narrator in a dreamy state-of-mind. Thus, although Ligeia ostensibly lacks structure initially, i ts structure subsists within the interweaving of these four prevailing themes.