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The Narrator
The man that the narrator murders at the story’s outset. Aware of the victim’s nightly ritual of reading in bed, the narrator swaps the man’s candle with a poisonous one, knowing that the victim’s claustrophobic apartment will mean that he breathes in the candle’s poisonous fumes and quickly dies. The plan works, and the coroner can’t discern a cause of death, deeming it “Death by the visitation of God.” The narrator and the victim are implied to be related somehow, since the narrator receives the victim’s inheritance.
The Victim Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse
The The Imp of the Perverse quotes below are all either spoken by The Victim or refer to The Victim. 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:
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The Imp of the Perverse
Quotes
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.
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The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner’s verdict was—“Death by the visitation of God.”
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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.
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The Victim Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse
The The Imp of the Perverse quotes below are all either spoken by The Victim or refer to The Victim. 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:
).
The Imp of the Perverse
Quotes
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.
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The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner’s verdict was—“Death by the visitation of God.”
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Page Number and Citation:
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.
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