Poe wrote about madness frequently, and many of his most famous stories concern protagonists who have either gone insane or are being driven insane as the story unfolds. The narrator, as both a cold-blooded killer and a victim of his own self-destructive impulses, exemplifies various kinds of madness and obsession. Indeed, though the essay’s opening paragraphs are largely devoted to proofs of the narrator’s objectivity and sound reasoning ability, his actions suggest that he is a very mentally unstable man. At certain points he exemplifies a kind of obsessive intelligence, a psychopathic amorality, and a total helplessness in the face of his darker, more “perverse” impulses. In turn, Poe offers a meditation on madness and obsession that is meant to relate to the reader in an uncomfortable way, while also being grotesque and horrifying.
After an essay-like introduction that makes the narrator seem objective, reasonable, and intelligent, he suddenly reveals that he is in prison for murdering someone, and that the members of the general public (“the rabble”) think he is insane. He then shifts to a description of the murder itself. Notably, the narrator never questions whether or not he should have murdered his victim, but simply begins his tale by explaining how he finally did it. In this, he seems psychopathic—he doesn’t see his victim as a fellow human being, but merely as an object that must be disposed of for the narrator to get what he wants.
The narrator “ponder[s]” for many months, obsessing over methods of committing a perfect murder. He doesn’t appear to hate his victim—he just wants to get him out of the way, and wants to avoid being caught in doing so. The narrator never expresses any passion related to the murder, and also never seems remorseful for killing his victim (who is implied to be related to him, considering that the narrator receives his victim’s inheritance upon his death). Furthermore, it is not the Imp of the Perverse that inspires the narrator to kill. His murderous act is not impulsive; it is cold, calculated, and sickeningly logical. Thus the narrator initially shows one aspect of madness and obsession: a kind of psychopathy that sees other human beings as expendable, and that uses intelligence and curiosity for wholly selfish ends.
After committing the murder and reveling in his success at escaping detection, the narrator eventually becomes haunted by the idea of being caught and condemned for his crime. To reassure himself, he begins habitually saying “I am safe” over and over. One day, however, he adds to this phrase, saying, “I am safe—yes—if I be not fool enough to make open confession!” He is then overcome by the “perverse” impulse to do exactly what he has told himself not to do. All of these thought processes—deliberating over how to commit the perfect murder, smugly ruminating on the success of his crime, anxiously fearing detection, and finally becoming fixated on the self-destructive idea of confessing—suggest a similar obsessiveness, as the narrator seems to continually brood over the same thought in various incarnations. The final instance of this obsession, however, relates to a different kind of madness: helplessness in the face of one’s impulses, most notably what the narrator dubs the “Imp of the Perverse.”
Though the narrator devotes the opening pages of the story to a discussion of the Imp, this impulse doesn’t enter his own personal tale until its finale. It is different from his obsessive ruminations and amoral psychopathy—it is an impulse that he has no control over, one that seems to take over his body and mind and makes him act in ways he cannot comprehend. He clearly has previous experience with this as well: he even says that in the past, “in no instance had [he] successfully resisted” the urgings of his “fits of perversity.” When the Imp overwhelms him and pushes him “to make open confession,” he takes off running and soon collapses. He then confesses to his crime, speaking in a sort of trance that he cannot remember afterwards. This is an extreme example of another aspect of the narrator’s madness: an impulse to act that is beyond reason, desire, or control.
The narrator exhibits his obsessive and mentally disturbed nature throughout the story, but he also makes important scientific points and presents ideas that readers will be familiar with. This contributes an unsettling tension to the story, then, as readers who have also experienced the influence of the Imp of the Perverse will find themselves aligned (however briefly) with a man who is undeniably immoral and insane. The narrator claims that his audience will “easily perceive” his sanity and innocence—and he certainly believes himself sane, if not innocent—but his tale ultimately expresses a kind of madness that is both demonstrably evil and horrifyingly relatable.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Madness and Obsession ThemeTracker
Madness and Obsession Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse
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.
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.
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.
But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-morrow I shall be fetterless!—but where?
