The Life of Edgar Allan Poe and its Reflection in the Characters of Ligeia

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The Life of Edgar Allan Poe and its Reflection in the Characters of “Ligeia”

Edgar Allan Poe spent so much of his life dealing with loss and death of family, that it is no wonder that his poetry and stories absorbed those experiences. His writings reflect what he experienced in his life through supernatural and exaggerated plots, settings, and especially characters.. The tone of his writing is known to be dark and ominous and often had a recurring theme of death. He also often wrote about love, but they were generally not happy stories. His personal experience with love, bot familial and romantic, often ended with death and substance abuse. The effects of his life seem especially prevalent in the characters of his story “Ligeia”. Each of the three characters contains a reflection of his life, in both positive and negative ways. Trying to understand the characters and their roles within the stories can bring out many connections and similarities Poe’s personal life that would otherwise go unnoticed. At first glance, the narrator, Ligeia, and Rowena are not particularly complex characters, however when you compare them to the people in Poe’s past, they become much more than just their face value.
Knowing the basics of Poe’s background is essential to learning more about his characters and his stories. Much of his work is stemmed from his own life experiences. Edgar Allan Poe was born to Eliza and David Poe Jr. in Boston in 1809. Even in his infancy, Poe faced poverty, illness, and other hardships. His parents were both actors and moved Poe and his two siblings frequently for work. David Poe Jr. was a known alcoholic Before Poe was a year old, his father had abandoned the family. His estranged father and his mother both died before...

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...otentially benefit from. In this case the narrator must suffer the marriage that he doesn't want in order to be reunited with the lost love that he so desperately missed. It is possible that this is a reflection of the isolation that Poe felt when he was forced to be among the people that did not accept him or appreciate him. The people in his life that he should have looked up to according to the societies standards were the ones that he usually was hurt by. In his life, he was abandoned by his father, he was disinherited from the family that raised him, he struggled with authority, and he was seen by many as nothing but a drunkard. Rowena would be an interesting visual for the overall cold, withdrawn feeling that he received while being isolated, either by means of the death of his loved ones or by the necessity to be a part of a society that he did not fit in to.

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