“Ligeia,” published in 1838 by Edgar Allan Poe, describes the story of a narrator who is deeply fascinated by his own imagination and thoughts and is immersed in the act to escape reality. This cautionary tale warns readers about the dangers of uncontrolled imagination and the problems that arise from the intertwining of fantasy and the real world. Through an internal struggle turned outward, the narrator's actions prove fatal to others. Due to excessive use of opium driven by the need to escape reality, the narrator dangerously allows his ideas and thoughts to manifest themselves in a feminine mirage that he cannot do without. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Ligeia, through his mysterious description, is shown to be a creation of the narrator's mind. Although on the surface she appears to be a real woman, small details lead one to believe that Ligeia is nothing more than a mirage. The narrator is deeply in love with Ligeia, but cannot remember significant aspects of her life. For example, the narrator has no memory whatsoever of the moment he met Ligeia: “The character of my beloved, her rare erudition, her singular yet placid touch of beauty, and the exciting and enthralling eloquence of her low and musical language , have made their way into my heart by such steady and furtively progressive steps, that they have remained unnoticed and unknown” (644). Ligeia is said to have slowly made her way into the narrator's heart so that she was undiscovered and unknown how she became his love. Being a figment of the narrator's imagination, Ligeia was constructed over time and thus had no exact moment or point of entry into the narrator's life. She slowly invaded his heart and then suddenly appeared. She has slowly manifested into what appears to the narrator as a real woman. In addition to her unknown arrival, Ligeia is described in a way that makes her seem like she's almost not there: her walk. It came and went like a shadow” (645). Her barely heard footsteps and shadow-like movements convey the idea that she is not there at all. More like a ghost or shadow figure, Ligeia's description increases suspicion that she is not real. Completely invented in the narrator's mind, she does not present herself as a normal human being, concluding that she is a fictional vision. The narrator's use of opium and aversion to the real world also add to the suspicion that Ligeia is nothing more than an illusion. Opium, which represents a destructive mentality, plays to the narrator's advantage in the sense that he can be pushed away from reality and into a dream state. In describing Ligeia, the narrator shares that her face and beauty "were the splendor of an opium dream" and declares her "an airy and uplifting vision" (645). Ligeia is described this way not as the object of a metaphor, but because she is literally the product of an opium-induced dream. The very nature of its existence is that of a drug-like scene. She's not real. The narrator further concludes that Ligeia has been "adapted to deaden the impressions of the outside world" (644). In other words, it was created specifically to lift the narrator from reality and allow him to retreat into his own imagination. Ligeia appears to the narrator as a real woman, and this is what prevents him from slipping into reality. Her presence leads him to accept his fantasy as real. Carrie Zlotnick-Woldenberg, a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School, reveals that “the narrator does not know the difference between eventsthat happen in the external world (reality) and those that happen in his imagination (fantasy)”. Ligeia is the factor that blurs the line between the real and the false, which is why, in her description, Ligeia can almost be seen as a real woman. The details of its existence are what prove it is something completely different. The narrator's use of opium pushes him into a dream state where reality is abandoned and Ligeia is created. Ligeia, a manifestation of the narrator's mind, represents the aspects with which the narrator is fascinated. He is obsessed with extreme and exotic study, and so Ligeia reflects this with her “raven black” hair and eyes that are “the brightest of blacks” (645-646). His facial features are strange to the narrator, influenced by his fancy for mystery and unusual study. The narrator, being a very intellectual character, is obsessed with his mind and thoughts. From this Ligeia is created intelligent: “I spoke of Ligeia's wisdom: it was immense – such as I have never known in a woman” (647). The narrator admires the fact that it is intellectual because he can identify with it. He, as someone who lives in his own mind, finds extreme pleasure in having a physical manifestation of his intellect. Due to the narrator's extreme disgust with reality, he tries in every way to live in fantasy. Ligeia, a projection of the imagination, is a spectacular way for the narrator to achieve his goal: "Ligeia has brought me much more, much more, than is normally the lot of mortals" (648) Ligeia gives the narrator more than humans of reality receive. By being so otherworldly, it drags the narrator out of reality, and this is one of its main purposes. The reason the narrator is so in love with Ligeia is not simply because he created her, but because she is essentially him. A representation of his beliefs and intellect, it allows the narrator to be fully connected only with himself and no one else, increasing his need to be separate from what is real. After Ligeia dies, the narrator marries a new woman called Lady Rowena, who proves to be the exact opposite of everything Ligeia represents. Ligeia is described as an exotic and strange woman, while Rowena is natural and represents reality by being a “blond-haired, blue-eyed” woman (649). The narrator comes to hate Rowena because of her differences from Ligeia: "While Ligeia is the embodiment of the romantic spirit, her successor is associated with the mundane and the material" (Zlotnick-Woldenberg). Rowena is reality, and the narrator desperately wants to immerse himself in fantasy. Ligeia is the representation of what he really wants. Zlotnick-Woldenberg argues that the imagined woman and Rowena cannot both be in the narrator's life: “The two women cannot coexist. They exist in sequence: first Ligeia, then Rowena, and then Ligeia again.” Their coexistence would be a conflict, because the narrator cannot be in reality and fantasy at the same time. Since the narrator favors fantasy, his hatred for Rowena grows immensely until the height of his disappointment: "While Rowena was in the act of bringing the wine to her lips, I saw, or perhaps I dreamed of seeing, fall into the glass, as from some invisible source in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant, ruby-colored fluid” (651) The narrator claims to have seen Ligeia poison Rowena's drink, but in reality he is the one who kills his wife . Zlotnick-Woldenberg states that the narrator's hatred is "best demonstrated by his hallucination that someone – obviously Ligeia, whose spirit seems to make an appearance before what he perceives as his actual revitalization – has it.. 2016.