In the story, the Imp of the Perverse symbolizes human impulses that are irrational, harmful, and seemingly inexplicable. The Imp (an imp is traditionally a kind of small demon) doesn’t actually exist in the story. Rather, it’s the spirit of self-destructive impulse: the being that whispers in the ear of someone standing on the edge of a cliff and urges them to jump. The Imp of the Perverse represents Poe’s genuine examination of a human psychological quirk—similar to what Sigmund Freud would call the “death drive” almost a century later—but with a twist. The Imp seems like it would drive the narrator to commit evil acts, but it’s not actually the Imp that makes the narrator murder his victim. Instead, the narrator’s own greed and seemingly psychopathic lack of empathy lead to his crime; these are human traits, but not ones that the narrator sees as “imps.” The Imp, meanwhile, is what pushes him to confess. This is what makes the Imp so perverse—the narrator’s own evil nature inspired him to commit murder, but the Imp causes him to destroy himself.
The narrator doesn’t seem to believe that he’s dealing with an actual supernatural entity, but he does personify humanity’s “perverse” impulse as a demon, and even seems to feel a hand on his back push him down just before he confesses. In this way the symbol almost comes to life by the end of the story, as a self-destructive instinct within the narrator becomes an external force leading to his own condemnation.
The Imp of the Perverse Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
The Imp of the Perverse Symbol Timeline in The Imp of the Perverse
