Compare And Contrast Ligeia And The Masque Of The Red Death

Athrv Bajpai

Professor Cheatham

English 100

15 February , 2018 The Power of Will to Conquer Death Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. In the two narratives of “Ligeia” and the “The Masque of the Red Death”, there is a dramatization of the desire of human beings to try and conquer death through the power of will. In “Ligeia”, death is conquered by means of the determination of the will. The narrator feels that there is a connection between part of the character of his beloved Ligeia, who possessed a stern passion, and the beliefs in the supernatural of Joseph Glanvill, an English moralist who contended “Man doth not yield himself to the angels,

In the story “Ligeia” Poe was trying to depict in the metamorphosis scene has been debated. The narrator has been shown as an opium addict, making him an unreliable narrator. Earlier in the story, the narrator describes Ligeia 's beauty as the radiance of an opium dream. Poe says "in the excitement of my opium dreams, I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night... as if... I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned... upon the earth"( Poe, “Ligeia”2). This was interpreted as evidence that Ligeia 's return was nothing more than a hallucination. If Ligeia 's return from death is literal, however, it it shows only a person dies by a weak will. This implies, that a strong will can keep someone alive.Three days later, Rowena dies, and the next day, the narrator sits next to her body. He remembered the shadow that he saw before looking at Rowena, but instead of thinking of his second wife, he begins to think only about Ligeia. For a few moments, he sees some color return to her face, and he supposes that Rowena is still alive, but he has no way to immediately call the servants and continues to watch. However, soon the body returns to death, and the narrator resumes daydreaming of Ligeia. After an hour, the process of semi-revival repeats, and the narrator attempts to help her, but she returns to death, and he returns to thoughts of his first wife. The process occurs several more times, and each time the corpse seems to return more finally to death until eventually, she manages to rise from the bed and walk a few steps towards him. The confused and frightened narrator asks himself if Rowena has revived, but he notices that she has grown taller, and he tears away her funeral shroud to find that her hair is not blonde but black. She opens her eyes, and he realizes that Ligeia - not Rowena - is standing before him. In the story “ The Masque of the Red Death”. At