Ligeia

I think that Ligeia did, in fact, exist in one point in the narrators life. We have come to the conclusion that the narrator is unreliable. He's and opium addict, therefore he may not be able to remember certain things that happened in his life. The narrator states "And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that i have never known the paternal name of her who was Ligeia?" I think that the narrator realizes that he has holes in his memory and as a defense mechanism is making up things, such as never knowing his true loves paternal name. The narrator tells us he can't remember things, "...in our endeavors to recall tho memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember." One of his favorite things about Ligeia was her eyes, "Those eyes! those large, those shining those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and i to them devoutest of astrologers." At this point he remembers her dieing, and he remarried to the lady of Tremaine. I believe that in his drugged up stupor he poisoned his new wife, "Having found the wine... I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid." I think that a subconscious part of him thought that it was unfair for the lady of Tremaine to live while Ligeia was dead, so he killed the lady. As we come to the end of the story, I also come to the conclusion that he killed the lady Ligeia. When the lady of Tremaine died she turned into the lady Ligeia, I think he was so drugged up that he couldn't tell the difference between their deaths.