Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Imp of the Perverse” opens with what seems to be an essay on human impulses. Using verbose and technical language, the first-person narrator discusses how sciences like phrenology have ignored a certain impulse towards “perversity.” Instead, they assume that all impulses must be beneficial and sent by God, and a “perverse” impulse is inherently destructive. This introduction then shifts to a discussion of the narrator’s own life: he is in prison for committing a murder, which he inexplicably confessed to years after the fact. The narrator attributes this confession to the human impulse towards self-harm, which he dubs the “Imp of the Perverse.” The “Imp,” he claims, drives him to “make open confession” despite otherwise having gotten away with the perfect murder. Through both the narrator’s scientific discussion and personal story, Poe paints a chilling portrait of the power of impulse, arguing that even seemingly “perverse” and unreasonable desires should not be ignored—or they can lead to devastating consequences.
In the story’s first pages, the narrator argues for the principles of reason and objectivity in the face of idealism and logical fallacies. Using phrenology (a pseudoscience devoted to studying the skull) as a stand-in for all psychological sciences, the narrator claims that people have ignored an important aspect of the human experience: the apparent impulse towards perverseness. The narrator makes some good scientific points in the process, arguing that phrenology started out with assumed conclusions—presuming to know what humans are intended to do, and in the process presuming to know God’s intentions—and has worked backwards from there, instead of observing the way people really act and drawing conclusions based on facts. The narrator highlights his own objectivity here, making him seem very reasonable and logical to the reader.
This essay, however, is all for the purpose of arguing that humans are incredibly unreasonable at times. The Imp of the Perverse is the narrator’s personification of the impulse to do what one knows they “should not.” As an example, the narrator describes a person standing on the edge of a precipice, knowing they should move away but lingering, and even feeling a wild desire to leap. This description was actually rather groundbreaking for the time (Sigmund Freud would write about it as the “death drive,” but not until nearly a century later), as it went against the accepted wisdom that humans were designed reasonably by God, and so would not have natural impulses to self-destruction. Through this acute insight about the “Imp,” then, both the narrator and Poe highlight the power of impulse to go even against what we want and know is best.
Ironically, the narrator is not impulsive about his most drastic act in the story: committing murder. He is instead very thorough and deliberate, rejecting any plan that he thinks might get him caught until he finally hits upon a foolproof scheme: murdering his victim with a poisoned candle. In his apparent psychopathy, he sees people as merely objects and means to an end, and so disposes of his victim without remorse. He doesn’t seem to have any hatred for his victim (who is implied to be related to him), but merely wants his wealth and inheritance. Horrifying though this is, it is in a sense very logical, and the narrator acts in his own best interests.
The narrator’s reasoning is ultimately overcome by impulse, however, as the Imp of the Perverse claims him and forces him to confess to his crime (which he had previously gotten away with). Once the thought enters his head—“I am safe—yes—if I be not fool enough to make open confession!”—he cannot resist acting on it. In an attempt to escape his own unreasonable desire, he takes off running, eventually drawing a crowd. He then seems to black out and confesses to everything, though he has no memory of doing so. Despite his logical mind and the careful, deliberate nature of his crime, he is overcome by a sudden self-destructive impulse and loses everything he worked for. It is because of this, then, that he made his initial argument for the existence of the Imp and its powerful influence on human behavior.
Part of the importance of “The Imp of the Perverse” is simply its innovation in describing and giving name to its titular impulse. Despite his many references to phrenology (which is now thoroughly debunked), Poe does make a legitimate psychological insight in the midst of his brief tale, going against the religious idealism of the time and looking forward to the age of psychoanalysis. The horror-story twist of a murderer driven not to kill but to confess dramatizes human impulses, but also argues for the importance of truly recognizing them—observing real human nature, even its darkest and most destructive aspects.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Reason vs. Impulse ThemeTracker
Reason vs. Impulse Quotes in The Imp of the Perverse
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?
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.
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.
