Analysis
"The Imp of the Perverse" begins as an essay rather than as a work of fiction, a format that Poe previously used in "The Premature Burial". It is, therefore, less about plot and more about theory. As Poe describes this theory:
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink away from the danger. Unaccountably we remain... it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height... for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it.
The work theorizes that all people have self-destructive tendencies, including the narrator, and that this "perversity" is also the narrator's attempt to avoid moral responsibility for his actions. The narrator's ultimate confession as a murderer is not inspired by any feelings of guilt but, instead, from a desire to publicize his actions despite knowing that he should not.
Poe's theory of the Imp of the Perverse may also be an early notion of the subconscious and repression which would not be fully theorized until Sigmund Freud.
Many of Poe's characters display a failure to resist the Imp of the Perverse—including the murderer in "The Black Cat" and the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart". The opposite of this impulse is seen in Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin who exhibits reason and deep analysis. One of the earliest examples, which predates "The Imp of the Perverse", was in Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. In one scene, the title character is overcome by an overwhelming desire to let himself fall off a steep cliff.
Additionally, scholars and critics suggest that Poe had his own "imp of the perverse". Poe biographer Jeffrey Meyers suggested that Poe wrote it to justify his own actions of self-torment and self-destruction. James M. Hutchisson says that the work reflects Poe's jealousy and sense of betrayal that led to his public feud with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and New England; the so-called "Longfellow War" was occurring at the same time Poe wrote "The Imp of the Perverse". Three months after the story was published, Poe lashed out against Boston's literary circle by trying to hoax them by reading his obscure poem "Al Aaraaf" at a lecture. Biographer Daniel Stashower suggests Poe's purposeful attempt to provoke his audience and alienate himself further was inspired by his Imp of the Perverse.
Read more about this topic: The Imp Of The Perverse (short Story)
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)