The Imp of the Perverse

by

Edgar Allan Poe

The Narrator Character Analysis

The unnamed narrator is a condemned man attempting to convince the reader that an irresistible impulse, which he calls the Imp of the Perverse, made him commit murder. The narrator, who apparently has an interest in phrenology, kills his victim and gets away with murder only to confess out of the blue years later in a seeming fit of insanity. He begins the story by claiming that human beings are beholden to some impulses that they know are actively harmful. “Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger,” he claims. “Unaccountably we remain.” This is caused by “perverse” instincts that can override humanity’s own capacity for self-preservation. In this way, the narrator attempts to justify his strange confession to an unspeakable crime. The crime itself doesn’t seem to bother him, but he regrets being caught, and blames both the Imp itself and humanity’s inability to comprehend the Imp as the source of his dilemma. In this, the reader can spot several key characteristics. First, the narrator is immoral—willing to commit murder for inheritance money (the victim is implied to be somehow related to him) and able to live happily for years afterwards. He is also incapable of taking any true responsibility for his actions. Based on his verbose and technically complex argument at the start of the story, the narrator is also an intelligent man. He uses his skills for evil means, however, killing without remorse and outwitting the authorities so that he isn’t caught until the Imp makes him reveal his crime. He is clearly prone to obsession as well, as he deliberates over the murder for months, then obsesses over being caught, and finally is driven mad by the “perverse” idea of confessing everything.

The Narrator Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse

The The Imp of the Perverse quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Reason vs. Impulse Theme Icon
).
The Imp of the Perverse Quotes

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 280-281
Explanation and Analysis:

Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. […] Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse, Phrenology
Page Number: 281
Explanation and Analysis:

That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is indulged.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 281-282
Explanation and Analysis:

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. […] It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:

Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Victim
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner’s verdict was—“Death by the visitation of God.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Victim
Related Symbols: The Poisoned Candle
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant […] In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low undertone, the phrase, “I am safe.” One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance, I remodelled them thus; “I am safe—I am safe—yes—if I be not fool enough to make open confession!”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 283-284
Explanation and Analysis:

And now my own casual self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered—and beckoned me on to death.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Victim
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:

They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:

But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-morrow I shall be fetterless!—but where?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Narrator Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse

The The Imp of the Perverse quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Reason vs. Impulse Theme Icon
).
The Imp of the Perverse Quotes

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 280-281
Explanation and Analysis:

Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. […] Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse, Phrenology
Page Number: 281
Explanation and Analysis:

That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is indulged.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 281-282
Explanation and Analysis:

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. […] It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:

Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Victim
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner’s verdict was—“Death by the visitation of God.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Victim
Related Symbols: The Poisoned Candle
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant […] In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low undertone, the phrase, “I am safe.” One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance, I remodelled them thus; “I am safe—I am safe—yes—if I be not fool enough to make open confession!”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 283-284
Explanation and Analysis:

And now my own casual self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered—and beckoned me on to death.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Victim
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:

They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Imp of the Perverse
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:

But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-morrow I shall be fetterless!—but where?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis: