Climax

"Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians." Here, Rowena is weakened and so is her will to live. At the same moment, the narrator experienced hallucinations which caused the spirit of Ligeia to strengthen and Ligeia's will to live and to overcome death became achievable. As if the two were related, Ligeia came to life as Rowena left hers, "...have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour." the narrator witnessed Rowena's death without comment as he watched her drink from her goblet of wine in which appeared almost invisibly, "three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If this I saw - not so Rowena." The narrator watched Rowena's death and then suddenly felt, "Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like," spirits before him, "Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia - and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable who with which I had regarded her thus enchrouded." It wasn't until Rowena left the narrators life completely that Ligeia had the chance to come back to the narrator's heart as a complete person with even more godly features, "And the chine, with it's dimples, as in health, might it not be hers? - but had then she then grown taller since her malady?" Since Ligeia already met her fate of death, she could not come back to life until someone else, such as Rowena mey their fate of death. Ligeia's spirit caused Rowena's death by placing the "three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid" into Rowena's wine goblet. The will to live, whch Ligeia possessed, overcame Rowena's life, since he did not possess the determination to beat the inevitable future of her death. The more opium the narrator used, the stronger the image if Ligeia's spirit and will to live became and the weaker Rowena became. It was the combination of the narrator's hallucinations and Rowena's weakening will to live that caused Ligeia's rebirth. The climax to this short story "Ligeia" is the death of Rowena because it signalled the rebirth of Ligeia, the character to the narrator's hallucinations, illusions that were part of the rising action of "Ligeia".