The tone of “The Oval Portrait” is frenzied and obsessive, reflecting the perspective of its unnamed narrator, who claims that he is experiencing a state of delirium following an injury. When the narrator first arrives at the dilapidated chateau, for example, his description of his own sleepless state reflects the tone of the story more broadly:
I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them. Long, long I read—and devoutly, devoutly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.
Despite his injuries, the narrator resigns himself to a sleepless and wakeful state, deciding instead to examine the various strange paintings that cover the walls of the chateau. His tone becomes surprisingly reverent as he describes the long hours he spends gazing upon the paintings “as the hours flew by.” His fixation on the paintings matches the obsessive tendencies of the unnamed painter whose dedication to his craft, the story later reveals, came at the cost of his wife’s life.
