Ligeia Ligeia describes the two marriages of the narrator, the first to the darkly featured and brilliant

Lady Ligeia; the second to her racial opposite, the fair and blonde Lady Rowena. Both women die quickly and mysteriously after their marriage ceremonies, and the narrators persistent memories of Ligeia bring her back to life to replace Lady Rowenas corpse. Ligeia gives the story its name, and every detail of the plot draws its purpose from her character because she is the object of the narrators love. Ligeia perseveres in spite of the obstaclesdeath and lightthat Poe, as the author, places in her way. Ligeia dies, but her memory remains the primary fixation of the narrators mind. The blonde-haired Rowena replaces her as the narrators wife, but the darkness of the marriage bedroom suffocates the blonde, and Ligeia returns in Rowenas body, imbuing the blondes body with her darker tones. Poe contrasts light and darkness to symbolize the conflict of two philosophical traditions. Ligeia emerges mysteriously from the Rhine, a river in southwest Germany. Being German, she symbolizes the Germanic Romantic tradition, closely related to the Gothic, that embraced the sensual and the supernatural. Ligeias mind is the center of the irrational and mystical, not the rational. The cold Lady Rowena is an ice queen from the north. She represents rationality. Rowena embodies the austerity and coldness of English empiricism, a philosophical tradition based on rational methods of observation, calculation, and analysis. Rowena suffers from her confinement within a Gothic bridal chamber that is dark and filled with unnatural decorations. The narrator preserves Ligeias sensuality and Romanticisms artificiality in the chambers architecture and decorations. Rowena fears the red drops and the gold tapestries because they seem so unreal. Figuratively, Rowena dies because she is deprived of sunlight and nature. If the grotesque chamber is, in part, responsible for Rowenas death, then the lady Ligeia can be considered a symbolic accomplice. Ligeias ultimate victory is her return from the dead. Ligeias return confirms that the narrator has lost his powers of rationality and lost touch with reality. Though some critics emphasize the unreliability of the narrator because of his abuse of opium, Poe is less concerned with the quality of the narrators senses than with the power of his visionswhat he sees, not how he sees it. This is not to say that Poe undervalues the narrator or means for us navely to believe his bizarre and contradictory confessions. Whether or not Ligeias return from the dead is actually, physically real or an opium-induced delusion, her apparent physical manifestation at the end of the story means that she has become more real for the narrator than a memory. Many of Poes narrators are unreliable because of paranoia and guilt about their own crimes, as in The Black Cat, in which the narrator is anxious about the discovery of his murder. In Ligeia, the narrator is obsessed with lost love. His love embraces contradictions. For instance, he passionately loves a woman without knowing her last name. But for Poe, these contradictions are symptoms of love. Poe offers the possibility that love brings Ligeia back, if only in the eyes of the narrator. The mysteriousness of Ligeias eyes spreads symbolically to the narrators eyes. If Ligeia conceals vast knowledge behind her eyes, then the narrator somehow inherits her eyes power to take in unnatural knowledgeto see the dead. The difference lies in the narrators ability to convey his knowledge to us, allowing us to witness and judge the return of the lady Ligeia. Neither we nor the narrator ever saw what was behind Ligeias eyes, and their mystery lent them their allure. While Ligeia strives to be a love story, it relies heavily on the sort of Gothic imagery for which Poe became famous. Ligeia resembles a criminal story like The Tell-Tale Heart with its emphasis on the narrators obsession with specific body parts. Eyes are crucial to both stor ies, and in this tale, Ligeias hair takes on the same importance. The Gothic dimension of this obsession involves the fantasy of reducing a human being to her body parts. The Gothic emphasis on anatomy raises the possibility that aspects of human identity reside in specific body parts, throwing into question the

notion of an immortal soul. What survives of Ligeia is not her soul, but the materialized form of her body, conveyed symbolically, in the last scene of the tale, by her dark hair. The story only dramatizes the unconscious longings of the narrator to see his lost love again, and it gives these longings the physical shape of Ligeias body. The love story, then, reverses the murder and dismemberment of a horror story like The Tell-Tale Heart. Love becomes the ability to revive a dead body. Roderick Usher As one of the two surviving members of the Usher family in The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick is one of Poes character doubles, or doppelgangers. Roderick is intellectual and bookish, and his twin sister, Madeline, is ill and bedridden. Rodericks inability to distinguish fantasy from reality resembles his sisters physical weakness. Poe uses these characters to explore the philosophical mystery of the relationship between mind and body. With these twins, Poe imagines what would happen if the connection between mind and body were severed and assigned to separate people. The twin imagery and the incestuous history of the Usher line establish that Roderick is actually inseparable from his sister. Although mind and body are separated, they remain dependent on each other for survival. This interdependence causes a chain reaction when one of the elements suffers a breakdown. Madelines physical death coincides with the collapse of both Rodericks sanity and the Ushers mansion. C. Auguste Dupin In the stories The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter, Poe creates the genre of detective fiction and the original expert sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin. In both The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter, Dupin works outside conventional police methods, and he uses his distance from traditional law enforcement to explore new ways of solving crimes. He continually argues that the Paris police exhibit stale and unoriginal methods of analysis. He says that the police are easily distracted by the specific facts of the crime and are unable to provide an objective standpoint from which to investigate. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the police cannot move beyond the gruesome nature of the double homicide. Because they are so distracted by the mutilated and choked victims, they do not closely inspect the windows of the apartment, which reveal a point of entry and escape. Dupin distances himself from the emotional aspect of the scenes violence. Like a mathematician, he views the crime scene as a site of calculation, and he considers the moves of the murderer as though pitted against him in a chess game. In The Purloined Letter, Dupin solves the theft of the letter by putting himself at risk politically. Whereas the Paris police tread lightly around the actions of Minister D , an important government official, Dupin ignores politics just as he ignores emotion in the gruesome murders of the Rue Morgue. In this story, Dupin reveals his capacity for revenge. When the Minister insulted him in Vienna years before the crime presently in question, Dupin promised to repay the slight. This story demonstrates that Dupins brilliance is not always dispassionately mathematical. He cunningly analyzes the external facts of the crime, but he is also motivated by his hunger for revenge. Dupin must function as an independent detective because his mode of investigation thrives on intuition and personal cunning, which cannot be institutionalized in a traditional police force. Lady Ligeia Many women return from the dead in Poes stories, and Lady Ligeia is the most alluring of them all. Ligeias sudden reappearance casts doubt on the mental stability of her husband, the tales narrator. Poe does not focus on the narrators unreliability but instead develops the character of the dark and brilliant Ligeia. Ligeias dark features contrast with those of the narrators second wife, the fair-skinned and blonde Lady Rowena. Ligeia does not disappear from the story after her apparent death. In order to watch over her husband and his cold new bride, Ligeia becomes part of the Gothic architecture of the bridal chamber. Poe symbolically translates Ligeias dark, haunting physical qualities into the Gothic and grotesque elements of the bedroom, including the eerie gold tapestries that Rowena believes comes alive. Ligeia is not only one of the dead who come alive but also a force that makes physical objects come alive. She uses these forces to doom the narrators

second marriage, and her manifestations in the architecture of the bedroom, whether real or the product of the narrator and his wifes imaginations, testify to the power of past emotions to influence the present and the future. Many women return from the dead in Poes stories, and Lady Ligeia is t he most alluring of them all. Ligeias sudden reappearance casts doubt on the mental stability of her husband, the tales narrator. Poe does not focus on the narrators unreliability but instead develops the character of the dark and brilliant Ligeia. Ligeias dark features contrast with those of the narrators second wife, the fair-skinned and blonde Lady Rowena. Ligeia does not disappear from the story after her apparent death. In order to watch over her husband and his cold new bride, Ligeia becomes part of the Gothic architecture of the bridal chamber. Poe symbolically translates Ligeias dark, haunting physical qualities into the Gothic and grotesque elements of the bedroom, including the eerie gold tapestries that Rowena believes comes alive. Ligeia is not only one of the dead who come alive but also a force that makes physical objects come alive. She uses these forces to doom the narrators second marriage, and her manifestations in the architecture of the bedroom, whether real or the product of the narrator and his wifes imaginations, testify to the power of past emotions to influence the present and the future. The Power of the Dead over the Living Poe often gives memory the power to keep the dead alive. Poe distorts this otherwise commonplace literary theme by bringing the dead literally back to life, employing memory as the trigger that reawakens the dead, who are usually women. In Ligeia, the narrator cannot escape memories of his first wife, Ligeia, while his second wife, the lady Rowena, begins to suffer from a mysterious sickness. While the narrators memories belong only to his own mind, Poe allows these memories to exert force in the physical world. Ligeia dies, but her husbands memory makes him see her in the architecture of the bedroom he shares with his new wife. In this sense, Gothic terror becomes a love story. The loving memory of a grieving husband revives a dead wife. Ligeia breaks down the barrier between life and death, but not just to scare the reader. Instead, the memory of the dead shows the power of love to resist even the permanence of death. in Ligeia, the narrator is unable to see behind Ligeias dark and mysterious eyes. Because the eyes symbolize her Gothic identity, they conceal Ligeias mysterious knowledge, a knowl edge that both guides and haunts the narrator. I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. The narrator opens Ligeia by confessing certain gaps in his memory of his beloved first wi fe. The narrators scant memory contrasts with the plot of the tale itself, which ultimately portrays Ligeia as one of Poes most enduring revenants, or women who return from the grave. While the narrator claims to have forgotten the specific circumstances in which he met Ligeia, the tale proceeds to establish Ligeia as an unforgettable presence. When the lady Rowena, the narrators second wife, becomes mysteriously ill in the second month of their marriage, the narrator has to fend off his memories of Ligeia. The tale affirms Ligeias power in contrast to the narrators claims of feeble memory. It thereby distinguishes Ligeia from Poes other first -person Gothic narrations by shifting attention from the narrators unreliability to the motif of the woman who return from the dead. While the plot highlights the irony of the narrators opening words, Poe does not make the narrators contradictions the centerpiece of the narratives interest. Ligeias obscure origins, as portrayed in this quotation, contribute to her Gothic status as a revenant. She possesses a certain Gothic allure because she seems to come from nowhere and to be free from the laws of nature that govern both the narrator and Rowena. Ligeias mysterious return in the tales final scene effectively reenacts the narrators opening remark about her sudden and mysterious appearance in his life. In this sense, while the tale undermines the narrators claims of feeble memory, his initial remark also foreshadows Ligeias Gothic return. She comes from nowhere in the tales eerie conclusion just as she originally presents herself to the narrator as his beloved wife without a past.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1843)

Captured by the Inquisition, the narrator fends off hungry rats, avoids falling into a giant pit, and escapes the razor-sharp blades of a descending pendulum. As the walls of his cell are about to close in and drive him into the pit, he is saved by the French army. Unnamed narrator - A victim of the Inquisition. The narrator maintains sanity that many of Poes other narrators lack. He functions with Dupin-like practicality despite the invisible enemy threatening him with torture. General Lasalle - A leader of the French army. General Lasalle is a real and positive presence of authority in contrast to the shadowy and invisible leaders of the Inquisition. The Pit and the Pendulum is distinct among Poes first-person narrations. Unlike the hypersensitive characters from other stories, such as Roderick in The Fall of the House of Usher or the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, this narrator claims to lose the capacity of sensation during the swoon that opens the story. He thus highlights his own unreliability in ways that other narrators resist or deny. Upon describing his possible loss of sensation, though, the narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum proceeds to convey the sensory details that he previously claims are beyond him. The narrative pattern resembles that of other stories, such as The Tell-Tale Heart, to the extent that the narrator says and does the opposite of what he originally announces. This story diverges from the pattern, however, in that this narrators descriptions are more objectively validthat is, less concerned with proving the narrators own sanity than with relaying a nd accounting for the elements of his incarceration. The story is also unusual among Poes tales because it is hopeful. Hope is manifest in the story not only in the rescue that resolves the tale, but also in the tales narrative strategy. The narrator maintains the capacity to recount faithfully and rationally his surroundings while also describing his own emotional turmoil. Unlike in The Tell-Tale Heart, for example, the burden of emotional distress does not hinder storytelling. The Pit and the Pendulum also stands out as one of Poes most historically specific tales. Poe counteracts the placelessness of a story like The Fall of the House of Usher with the historical context of the Inquisition and its religious politics. This historical frame fills in for a personal history of the narrator. We do not know the specific circumstances of his arrest, nor are we given any arguments for his innocence or explanation for the barbarous cruelty of the Inquisitors. Poes description of the pendulum blades descent toward the narrators heart is extremely graphic, but Poe uses the portrayal of explicit violence to create a suspenseful story rather than to condemn the Inquisition. The tale suggests a political agenda only implicitly. Poe does not critique the ideological basis of the tales historical context. The narrative examines the physical and emotional fluctuations of the pure present, leaving historical and moral judgments to us. The Pit and the Pendulum is a traditional Poe story that breaks from Poes conventions: violent yet ultimately hopeful, graphic yet politically allusive.

In the 1840 preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, a collection of his short stories, Poe describes his authorial goal of unity of design. In The Philosophy of Composition, which was written three years after The Pit and the Pendulum, he proclaims that the ideal short story must be short enough to be read at a single sitting. Moreover, he argues that all elements of a work of fiction should be crafted toward a single, intense effect. These critical theories merge in The Pit and the Pendulum; this short tale ruminates, at every moment, on the horror of its punishments without actually requiring that they be performed. Stripped of extraneous detail, the story focuses on what horror truly is: not the physical pain of death, but the terrible realization that a victim has no choice but to die. Whether the narrator chooses to jump into the pit or get sliced in half by the pendulum, he faces an identical outcomedeath.

The horror of this lack of choice is the effect for which everything in the story strives. The story, however, holds out hope by demonstrating that true resolve when what someone chooses to do seems most impossible. When threatened by the pendulum, the narrator does not succumb to the swooning of his senses. He recruits his rational capacities and uses the hungry rats for his own benefit. In this way, the narrator resembles a character like C. Auguste Dupin in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, who can separate himself from the emotional overload of a situation and put himself in a position to draw rational conclusions. Morella Plot Summary By Michael J. Cummings... 2007 . A quotation (epigraph) precedes the first paragraph of the story. For information about this quotation, see Themes: Fate of the Individual Identity After Death. .......When the narrator meets a woman named Morella, his soul burns with fires it had never known before. However, they are not the fires of carnal desire but of an indefinable yearningperhaps for intellectual secrets that this woman of enormous learning and intelligence possesses. .......After they marry, she introduces him to one of her favorite activities: studying mystical writings. Poring over them, the narrator hopes to fathom their arcane meanings, but fails. So he submits himself to his wifes guidance. By and by, a forbidden spirit arises within him as she recites strange words from the ashes of a dead philosophy. For hours at a time, he listens to her, enjoy ing the lull of her musical voice. But one day her words become tainted with terror and a shadow falls across the narrator's soul. It is no longer a joy to listen to her; it is a horror. .......The most beautiful became the most hideous, the narrator says, as Hinnon became GeHenna. .......Among her favorite philosophers are the ancient Greek Pythagoras, who believed in the rebirth of the soul after death, and two Germans, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), who focused their attention on the egos perception of reality and arrived at different versions of pantheism. .......The subject of whether personal identity, or individual consciousness, survives death intrigues the narrator, in part because of the marked and agitated way in which Morella discusses it. However, in time, her manner oppresses him. (It may be that the narrator is jealous of his wife's superior intellect.) .......I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers," the narrator says, "nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. .......As for Morella, Yet was she woman, the narrator says. In other words, in spite of her intellectual preoccupations, she still longs for the attentions of her husband. However, aware of his discontentaware that he now finds her repulsiveshe begins to pine and suffers a decline in her health, manifested by her paleness and the prominence of veins on her forehead. By now, the narrator begins to yearn for her death, but she holds fast to lifefor irksome monthsfraying the narrators nerves. Her refusal to die infuriates him, and he curses time for lengthening her life. .......One evening in autumn, Morella, lying in bed, calls out for her husband. The narrator recalls that there was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich October leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen." .......After the narrator kisses her forehead, she utters this paradox: I am dying, yet shall I live. She then tells her husband that although he could not love her in life, he will adore her in death. When she dies, she says, their child shall live but sorrow will fill her husbands days and thou shalt bear abo ut with thee thy shroud on the earth. .......The narrator asks her how she knows these things. But she turns away, then expires. "Yet, as she had foretold," the narrator says, "her child, to which in dying she had given birth, which breathed not until the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived." .......The child grows rapidly while the narrator discovers to his dismay that she takes on an uncanny resemblance to her mother. Her smile, her eyes, her hair, her fingers, the sad music of her speech, the words she speaksall remind him of Morella.

.......He loves his child, though. In fact, he loves her with a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth." But his love for her darkens as she begins to take on the mental powers of an adult womanof Morella. After the first ten years of her life, the child even begins speaking the same phrases and expressions of Morella. As a result, the narrator suffers intense anxiety. .......Over the years, the narrator had never spoken to his daughter about her mother, never baptized her, and never given her a name. But here she is a duplicate Morella to bedevil him. Perhaps if she is baptized now, the ceremony will drive the spirit of Morella out of the girl and the narrator will be able to look to the future with hope, not dread. .......On the day of the ceremony, when the clergyman asks for the name of the child, a fiend takes control of the narrator and he whispers into the ear of the clergyman Morella. At the s ound of the name, the child takes on the hues of death, and falling on the black slabs of the narrator's ancestral vault, responds, "I am here!" .......After the child dies, the narrator lays her in the same tomb where he interred Morella. But Morella is no longer there. There is only emptiness where her body once was. Thereafter, the narrator says, "I kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only Morella. The winds of the firmament breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermoreMorella." Setting The action takes place in 18th or 19th Century Europe at the residence of the narrator and his wife, Morella. They are probably of aristocratic ancestry, since they maintain an ancestral burial vault. Morella was educated at Pressburg (spelled with one s in the story), a university city on the Danube River that was associated with witchcraft and the occult. Once the capital of Hungary, the city today is the capital of Slovakia. In the 20th Century, its name was changed to Bratislava. Characters Narrator: Unnamed person who tells the story of Morella, the woman he married. Like the narrators of other Poe stories, the narrator of Morella exhibits symptoms of mental instability. Therefore, the reader cannot be certain that his account is reliable. Morella: Wife of the narrator and a woman of formidable intellect and erudition. Daughter: Offspring of the narrator and Morella. The child closely resembles Morella physically and mentally. Clergyman: Person who baptizes the child of the narrator and Morella. Type of Work and Publication Date Morella" is a short story in the Gothic horror genre. It was first published in April 1835 in the Southern Literary Messenger. Narration The story is told by an unnamed narrator in first-person point of view. The fantastic nature of story as well as passages in it in which the narrator describes himself as distraught indicate that he might be mentally unbalanced and, therefore, an unreliable witness.

. . Themes Fate of Individual Identity After Death

.......When Morella instructs the narrator about mystical philosophy, she apparently touches on the subject of whether individual (or personal) identity survives death or becomes part of a universal identity. Of this subject, the narrator says that "the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest." The possibility of the loss of personal identity frightens the narrator; he does not want his individuality, his personality, to be absorbed into some super soul in which all identities merge. The quotation preceding the opening paragraph of the story introduces the idea of a single, universal identity. The quotation, or epigraph, is from Plato's work, Symposium. Poe's translation of it from the Greek reads, "Itselfalone by itselfeternally one and single." References in the fourth paragraph of the story to Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) again focus on this idea. They Morella introduces the narrator to German idealist philosophers in particular, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), who focused their attention on how the ego perceives reality; they arrived at different versions of pantheism. Unlike traditional theism, which regards God as separate from the universe, pantheism says God and the universe, with all its parts, are one and the same. The reference in the fourth paragraph of the story . Fichte proposed that all things are part of a single, universal ego, a concept that is pantheistic. also centered his philosophy, in part, on a type of pantheism. .......Morella also introduces the narrator to the beliefs of Pythagoras (580-500 BC), the Greek mathematician and philosopher famous for a geometric theorem stating that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides (c2=a2+b2). But Pythagoras is also famous for his belief in the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis). According to Pythagoras, the soul lives on after the body dies, sojourning for a while in the abode of the dead, then returning to the world to inhabit another being. In The Age of Fable, Thomas Bulfinch (17961867) quotes the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) as saying that Pythagoras told his disciples the following: Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. I myself can remember that in the time of the Trojan war I was Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, and fell by the spear of Menelaus. Lately being in the temple of Juno, at Argos, I recognized my shield hung up there among the trophies. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that, passing from the body of a beast into that of a man, and thence to a beasts again. As wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with others, yet is always the same wax, so the soul, being always the same, yet wears, at different times, different forms. The ideas of Pythagoras, Fichte, and Schelling, as well as the quotation from Plato, indicate that Morella's soul lives on after death in the body of her daughter as part of a universal ego. Horror As in many other Poe stories, horror is a central theme. The narrator introduces this theme in the third paragraph of the story when he describes the effect that Morella's readings have on him: "And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too unearthly tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror. . . ." Spousal Mistreatment The narrator treats Morella as an object that he uses to satisfy his curiosity about her remarkable intellect and erudition. After they marry, she freely shares with him her knowledge of a variety of subjects and introduces him to the secrets of arcane philosophies. Although the narrator says he finds her abstruse ideas terrifying and horrible, he also says that he finds one concept he and his wife examinewhether personal identity "is or is not lost for ever" at deathintensely interesting. In time, however, Morella and the sound of her voice repel him. I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers," the narrator says, "nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her

melancholy eyes. Eventually, the narrator rejects Morella and yearns for her death even though she "pined away daily" for his love. Jealousy It may be that the reason for the narrator's rejection of Morella is his realization that she is far more intelligent than he is. Rather than acknowledging his own shortcomings, he projects them onto Morella, then completely rejects her and even yearns for her death. Revenge Deeply hurt by the narrator's rejection of her, Morella decides to use her powers to gain revenge against the narrator. The Narrators Hell on Earth On his own, the narrator fails to grasp the meaning of the texts Morella provides, so she undertakes to tutor him in the finer points of mystical philosophy. However, in time, Morella and her tomes cast a shadow across his soul; what he hears from her lips horrifies him. Earlier, Morella and her ideas were beautiful, like the valley of Hinnom outside ancient Jersualem. But in time she and her ideas became utterly repulsive, just as Hinnom (Paragraph 3) did when its residents began burning children as sacrifices to Moloch, an Ammonite god. The sacrificial fires became associated with hellfire in Jewish and Christian theology, and the term Ge-Hinnom (meaning valley of Hinnom) evolved into Ge-Henna, or simply Gehenna, which became a synonym for hell. Thus, for the narrator, living with Morella and listening to her recitations became hell on earth. He could not even bear the touch of her hand. The Conception of the Daughter Although the narrator never loved Morella, he did have sexual relations with her. Morella speaks of their intimacy when she is dying, saying, "But within me is a pledge of that affectionah, how little! which thou didst feel for me." Within me refers to the child that she is about to bear. Morellas Decline and Revenge After the narrator annuls all affection for Morella, he observes, Yet was she woman. In other words, in spite of her preoccupation with the incorporeal, she still needs physical expressions of love and affection. When the narrator refuses to fulfill her needs, she begins to pine away, her health declining day by day. Deeply wounded by the narrators rejection of her, Morella decides to gain revenge. Calling upon her knowledge of metempsychosis, she passes her soul into the body of her daughter, whom she gives birth to at the moment she dies. According to the narrator, the child grows into a replica of her mother. The memory of Morella remains alive in the daughter, and the narrator knows no peace. He leads a tortured existence. The Baptism The narrator decides to have his child baptized to drive from her the spirit of Morella and to drive Morella from his own tortured mind. The narrator explains that the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. At the baptismal font, the clergyman asks what the child is to be called. A demon then seizes control of the narratoror so the narrator suggestscausing him against his will to whisper the child's name into the ear of the clergyman: Morella. The child hears the whisper, falls onto the familys vault, and says, I am here. The reader may wonder why a burial vault is near a baptismal fontthe former suggesting a cemetery and the latter suggesting a church. One explanation is this: In earlier times, it was customary to entomb bodies in churches, chapels, and monasteries. Thus, the church may have housed the ancestral vault of which the narrator speaks.

Wheres the Body? The narrator entombs his daughter in the same vault where Morella was interred. However, when laying his daughter to rest, he finds no traces of Morella. What happened? Here is one possibility: After the narrator's daughter dies, the soul of Morella becomes free to emigrate and returns to its original body. Meanwhile, during funeral rites for the daughter, Morella leaves the tomb as a vampire or zombie in order to bedevil the narrator later. Another possibility is that the narrator, a demented man from the very beginning, imagined or fabricated the whole Morella story. Allusions to Homer's Odyssey The narrator of "Morella" refers twice to the musical quality of Morella's voice and once to the musical quality of his daughter's voice: Paragraph 3: "And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her (Morella's) side, and dwell upon the music of her voice. . . ." Paragraph 5: "I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her (Morella's) musical language. . . ." Paragraph 18: "In the sad musical tones of her (his daughter's) speech . . . ." The references appear to be allusions to the Sirens in Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. The Sirens are sea nymphs who sing a song so alluring that it attracts to their island all passing sailors who hear itand then the sailors sit, transfixed by the song and the mystical knowledge that it imparts, until they die. As Odysseus and his crew near the island in their ship, Odysseus ever curiouswants to hear the song and learn the secrets it tells. However, realizing that its irresistible music will cause him and his men to abandon ship and meet the same deadly fate of other sailors who heard it, he plugs the ears of his men with wax, so that they are unable to hear, after ordering them to tie him to a mast. Thus, as they pass the island, Odysseus himself hears the song but cannot go ashore, though he wants to, because he cannot break free of his bonds. Like the Sirens, Morella also "sings" a song of mystical knowledge. Other References Cypress and Hemlock: In the last paragraph of the story, the narrator says that "the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day." In 399 BC, the citizens of Athens wrongfully sentenced the philosopher Socrates to death for offenses against the state. After spending a month in prison, he was forced to drink poison made from the hemlock plant. Drinking a hemlock concoction was the method of capital punishment in ancient Athens. This mode of execution was like modern "lethal injection" except that the condemned prisoner drank death rather than receiving it through a vein. Over the centuries, writers incorrectly reported that Socrates committed suicide, and hemlock became associated with self-inflicted death. In "Morella," the narrator's reference to hemlock indicates that he contemplated suicide. As for the cypress, it is a tree that has been long associated with sadness and melancholy. Eros: God of love in Greek mythology; sexual desire. Ficthe: See Themes: Fate of the Individual Identity After Death. Lustra: Plural of lustrum, a Latin term meaning a five-year period. In discussing his daughter, the narrator says, "Thus passed away two lustra of her life." In other words, ten years of her life had passed. Palingenesis (or Paliggenedia or Paliggenesia): In Paragraph 4 of the story, Poe uses a word written with the letters of the Greek alphabet. Its transliteration is palingenesis, meaning new birth, birth again, regeneration, or reincarnation. Pythagoras: See Themes: Fate of the Individual Identity After Death. Roses of Paestum: Roses that bloomed twice a year in Paestum, an ancient city on the southwestern coast of Italy, south of Salerno. The Roman poets Vergil (70-19 BC), Ovid (43 BC-17 AD), and Martial (circa 40 AD-circa 103 AD) all wrote of Paestum's roses. Schelling: See Themes: Fate of the Individual Identity After Death. Teian: This adjective, spoken by Morella to the narrator (Thou shalt no longer, then, play the Teian

with time) refers obliquely to the Greek poet Anacreon, who was a Teianthat is, a resident of Teos, a Greek colony in Ionia, Anatolia (the Asian part of present-day Turkey). Anacreon wrote poetry that celebrated wine, women, and song. Morella's allusion to Anacreon is her way of telling the narrator that his days of happiness have ended. Tenement of Clay: Reference to the human body, a phrase used by English poet John Dryden (1631-1700) in his 1680-1681 work, Absolom and Achitophel. Climax The climax of the first part of the story occurs when Morella dies. The climax of the second part of the story occurs when the narrator lays the body of his daughter to rest in the ancestral tomb and discovers that the body of Morella is missing.