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The Imp of the Perverse
1845 work by Edgar Allan Poe / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning as an essay, it discusses the narrator's self-destructive impulses, embodied as the symbolic metaphor of The Imp of the Perverse. The narrator describes this spirit as the agent that tempts a person to do things "merely because we feel we should not."
"The Imp of the Perverse" | |
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Short story by Edgar Allan Poe | |
![]() 1935 illustration by Arthur Rackham | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Short story |
Publication | |
Published in | Graham's Magazine |
Publication date | July 1845 |
In the story, the narrator commits murder to inherit a man's estate. A coroner attributes the death to an act of God, and the narrator benefits from his crime. Several years later, the narrator starts obsessing about a possible confession for his crime. He acts on a self-destructive impulse, and confesses his crime in public, leading to his swift trial and execution.