28 pages • 56 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Imp of the Perverse
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1845A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Irrationality and Perverseness
Poe wrote many times about human irrationality, or the impulse to act without control or discernable motivation. In “The Imp of the Perverse,” Poe explores the concept of “perverseness” in depth, portraying it as a naturally occurring universal trait. This dark, irresistible urge defies rational explanation despite rigorous self-examination and can overwhelm the rational mind’s attempts to control and suppress it. The narrator suggests that this “Imp” is the driving force behind irrational actions and the source of humanity's propensity for folly.
Poe depicts an irrational protagonist who initially presents himself in rational and logical terms. His opening treatise demonstrates that he is capable of conceptualizing highly intelligent proofs regarding the nature of the mind. His self-defined characteristic of perverseness and its mechanisms are described at length through both abstract and personal examples. The narrator’s capacity for seemingly objective self-examination is also revealed through this theoretical discussion. In a verbose and lofty discursive argument, he establishes credibility, building his case for the universal trait of perverseness. He asserts that one “innate and primitive principle of human action” is that the “assurance of the wrong” of an action is “the one unconquerable force which impels us” to act on it (3). He cites and describes relatable examples of irrational choices, such as procrastination of important tasks and suicidal ideation. However, when the narrator reveals his current situation, the reader realizes that they have been persuaded by the argument of a murderer with questionable “sanity.”
As the narrative progresses, it also emerges that the narrator’s definition of perverseness is based on a warped moral compass. He believes that his error is not in committing the murder but in the self-destructive impulse to confess. Significantly, the narrator does not blame the Imp of the Perverse for inciting him to murder. Presenting his execution of the crime as a logical and calculated process, he boasts, “It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation” (9). The narrator’s amorality is demonstrated as he accuses the Imp of ruining his perfect crime through an obsessive and irrational need to incriminate himself. His focus on the frustratingly illogical nature of perversity raises unsettling questions about ethics and virtue. The narrator’s argument ultimately highlights that the moral course of action (such as confessing to a crime) is not necessarily the most logical.
While the story raises moral questions, its central concern is with the dark impulses of human nature. The complex narrator, who displays logic and reason despite his criminality and “madness,” is key to conveying the story’s disturbing message. Poe ultimately highlights the fragile façade of rationality, revealing the perverse impulses that lie beneath the surface of civilized society.
Self-Punishment
“The Imp of the Perverse” paints an unsettling portrait of amorality. While the narrator has committed a coldly calculated murder, he expresses no remorse. However, by presenting the protagonist’s perverse impulse to confess to the crime, Poe introduces an undercurrent of morality to the narrative. Although the narrator believes he is untroubled by his conscience, his actions tell a different story. The confession suggests an internal battle of good and evil, culminating in the narrator’s self-punishment.
The crime described in the story is an old one—the narrator has been living well for years after inheriting the estate of his murder victim. Yet, ultimately, he is punished for his crimes when he is forced by what he calls the Imp of the Perverse to confess and is condemned to be hanged. From one perspective, this could be interpreted as divine justice, in which God punishes the wicked, but Poe’s portrayal is more complex than that. The narrator opens the story by ridiculing any theory that relies on God’s design as the explanation. He mocks phrenology’s invention of organs for each human propensity, comically stating that the organ for the desire to eat “is the scourge with which the Deity compels man, will-I-nill-I, into eating” (1).
A different interpretation of his confession is that the narrator is driven to punish himself by his suppressed guilt. He is haunted by his tortured subconscious or alter ego. Poe is often credited with anticipating the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, such as the dark, taboo, and fearful impulses of the subconscious, the “id.” Freud himself acknowledged his debt to the works of imaginative literature, which informed his theories of the uncanny, or the unintentional yet compulsive return of people’s suppressed emotions. In “The Imp of the Perverse,” the growing power of the narrator’s suppressed guilt is depicted through the physical materialization of the Imp. The Imp gains shape and power, starting as a creeping “icy chill,” then confronting the narrator as the ghost of the murder victim, and becoming a constantly present “invisible fiend” (13).
Poe suggests that the narrator’s impulse toward self-punishment is paradoxically intertwined with his desire for freedom. By confessing his deed, the narrator unburdens himself from unbearable pressure from the Imp, even though it means facing the consequences of his actions. His suppressed guilt causes him to punish himself for his crimes, which is perhaps what the narrator means when he refers to the Imp’s potential force for good.
The Interplay of Creation and Destruction
The elements of craft at play in “The Imp of the Perverse” convey a paradoxical relationship between creation and destruction. Poe creates a work of art in a story based on an examination of a destructive impulse. The story’s structure revolves around a similar dichotomy, with the first half building an argument that the second effectively unravels (or at least undermines) by revealing the speaker’s unreliability. The story is a work of Gothic creativity, which conveys the unexplainable, mysterious, and terrible aspects of life to counterbalance the scientific certainty that characterized the previous generation.
Certain ideas within the story resonate with these aspects of its style. The idea of creation first arises in a religious context, with the narrator noting that science has tended to base its study of human nature on what it understands to be God’s purpose in creation. For example, if one assumes God wants humans to continue to exist, it is only a small leap of logic to conclude that humans have an innate instinct to reproduce. The narrator, however, argues that it is foolish to presume that one knows God’s intentions in this way: “If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation?” (2). This idea that God’s purposes are mysterious is certainly not a new one, but the story here links it to its depiction of creation as paradoxical. People might assume that God’s creation operates according to human ideas of order, with everything tending toward logical and productive ends, but the narrator suggests that the impulse toward self-destruction might also be part of God’s creation. Further, the impulse is itself paradoxical, both creative and destructive: The narrator describes it as capable of operating in the “furtherance of good” as well as being a “nightmare of the soul” (7, 12).
Additionally, the creative and destructive impulses of the murderer have parallels with the creative act. As in many of Poe’s tales, the murderer-protagonist is himself an artist, a virtuoso in the art of killing, and carries out his crimes to perfection. He even finds inspiration for the act from art, having read about someone who was accidentally killed by a poisoned candle (9). He is assured in his artistry, using a “wax-light of [his] own making” as a weapon and leaving “no shadow of a clew [sic]” to tie him to the deed (9). It is with cunning artistry and shrewd creative power that the murderer pulls off the act that ultimately destroys him. Poe’s story can be read as a transgressive tale that exposes the creative process as a destructive practice common to art and science.
This duality of beauty and horror is pervasive in Gothic writing, in which the images of death and decay are chosen for their effect of instilling awe and terror in their audience. Similarly, Poe’s own obsession with death, perhaps due to his experience of losing his mother, adoptive mother, and wife to long illnesses, is speculated to have inspired the creation of his many Gothic tales and the birth of a new genre of American literature. Poe allegorically explores his own experience of the creative process as his own Imp that “harasse[s] because it haunt[s]” (10).
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By Edgar Allan Poe
