(It will then be up to each reader to decide whether this condition of not being right is genuine or whether the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is perhaps less reliable and more duplicitous than he usually gets credit for being.) Poe wants the reader to immediately grasp that-to use the modern vernacular-this boy ain’t right. The intense and emotion-rich language of one distances the reader from his narrator immediately by explicitly delineating the difference between the murderer and the average person. These opening lines are substantially different in every imaginable way from that of the “The Tell-Tale Heart” but both serve the same essential purpose. “In the consideration of the faculties and impulses - of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them.” Contrast that Poe murderer with the one who begins his tale in this way: It is almost impossible to imagine that the man telling this story is no suffering great emotional anguish likely stimulated from a breakdown in mental processes at some point beyond the norm. “True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them.” Consider “The Tell-Tale Heart” begins with an eye toward how the composition of the sentences create a psychological portrait of the narrator:
The opening of the story is the exact opposite of that other famous Poe story narrator by a murderer flirting with madness. The narrator of “The Imp of the Perverse” begins his confessional almost as though writing an academic paper. The decision to have a person without a name telling his stories of madness contributes very much to the unity of effect by immediately establishing that these narrators are intended to be less a distinct individual relating a unique story than an allegorical conception of the human condition. This intention is part and parcel of Poe’s legendary contribution to the art of crafting short fiction in which there ideally will be a “unity of effect” in which every single aspect of composition serves a specific purpose. Poe is far too attentive to detail-in fact, he is one of the most detail-oriented of all short story writers-for the lack of providing names for protagonists who are sharing their life accounts to be anything other than very intentional.
And like those other characters with names that are not shared, the lack of this vital as for identifying the narrator of “ The Imp of the Perverse” is not the result of a lack of imagination or simply oversight on the part of the author. Well, certainly he has a name, but it is not shared with the reader. Like so many of Poe’s first-person narrators struggling with madness, this one has no name. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.
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