The Unreliable Narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligiea."

Ligeia is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most haunting and well-written supernatural tales. Careful examination, however, suggests that the story's supernatural elements may have a more conventional source.

Poe deliberately erodes his narrator's credibility throughout the story to undermine the narrator's final conclusion that his beloved Ligeia has returned from the grave.

The first suggestion of unreliability comes in the second sentence, "Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering." The narrator then claims to have never known the last name of his beloved before launching into an incredibly detailed recollection of her physical appearance. Curiously, however, he seems to define her in terms one would apply to a statue, "her marble hand," "features...not of the regular mould," and "skin rivaling the purest ivory." The narrator goes on to realize he's never found his beloved at fault, and recalls her passionate devotion bordering on idolatry (another statue reference).

Then, we are given a crucial piece of information. The narrator is an opium addict "habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug." Opium is mentioned twice more, just before the narrator begins to detect signs of life in his recently-deceased wife. There is also the matter of the strange liquid that makes its way into Rowena's wine, apparently delivered by some barely-detectible apparition.

In the first two pages of this story, Poe has already effectively torpedoed his narrator's credibility by contradicting his claim of a feeble memory with the lengthy detailed description of Ligeia. The narrator's admission of opium use combined with the statuesque terms he uses to describe his beloved Ligeia and her apparent infallibility cause the reader to question whether Ligeia existed at all outside the confines of the narrator's mind. Then, the mysterious liquid that appears, "as if from invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room," immediately precedes Rowena's demise.

By this point, Poe had made it obvious to the reader that the narrator is not to be trusted, and his improbable, mystical explanation for the liquid's appearance probably exists only to cover up the far more logical explanation, that the narrator is "fettered in the shackles" of his addiction, and has poisoned her himself. Rowena's corpse does not return to life in the form of Ligeia, rather, our unreliable narrator has envisioned the whole episode while in an opium-induced state. Poe's skillful erosion of his narrator's credibility combined with his admission of drug use makes this the only logical conclusion.