THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE (1845)

Whereas in THE PURLOINED LETTER Poe gave his readers a definite crime, followed by a lot of windy philosophizing, before revealing the crime's solution.

In THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE, though, Poe spends half the story having a monologist explain his theory that the human possesses a hitherto unacknowledged "principle of human action," which he calls "perverseness," which exists to make the subject act against his best interests.

The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well, is excited simultaneously with its development. It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.

The monologist gives three examples in which the principle of perverseness interferes with the subject's self-preserving actions: a speaker's tendency to talk around his subject, thus irritating his listener; general procrastination about needed tasks; and finally, a tendency to want to throw oneself into an abyss no matter how aware one is of the physical threat-- which might be used as Poe's justification for writing about horrific subject matter:

 And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

Finally, after all these ruminations-- strangely dependent on the supposed revelations of phrenology-- Poe finally has his monologist reveal that he is the best example of perverseness, because perverseness has placed in him in prison, waiting for the hangman. In order to secure an inheritance, the monologist used a poisoned candle to kill his intended victim. The crime went undetected for some time, until at least the speaker could no longer stand holding the secret, and revealed all to the authorities-- not out of guilt, but just for the perverse pleasure of plunging into the abyss.

The murder is certainly a bizarre crime by any reckoning. And though the narrator is not a "psycho" in the usual sense of the word, he does commit one psychologically unstable act, even though only he is harmed by it.

THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1844)

Poe starts out this story with a serious tone, surveying the life of a man fearful of being buried alive due to his catalepsy. However, halfway through the story, Poe takes an antic turn, and the fellow actually gets his act together and overcomes his death-obsession.

It's a rare example of a Poe protagonist getting over his "psycho" nature. The 1962 film mostly adapted Poe's idea of the protagonist making a special crypt from which he could escape premature burial, and then added a "murder the husband" plotline.

THE SYSTEM OF DR. TARR AND PROF. FETHER (1844)

I'm surprised that this story has never been very popular in cinema and TV. Perhaps its "big reveal" would seem too obvious to many modern viewers, that of "the inmates running the asylum."

Another unnamed narrator chooses to take a tour of a modern asylum, and finds that all of the members of the staff, including director Monsieur Mallard, seem to act strangely at dinner. The narrator even notices that the people's clothes don't fit them well, but at no time does he tip to the solution. By chance the normal asylum-staff-- who have been tarred and feathered by the reigning lunatics-- manage to break free and re-take the madhouse, though the tarred-up employees look like "big black baboons from the Cape of Good Hope" to the befuddled narrator.

Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether are merely figments of Mallard's imagination, his joking reference to the torments he and his fellow nutcases have visited on the asylum-staff. By story's end the unusually thick narrator still thinks that the fictional authorities still exist, so maybe he's had his own mental breakdown.  

THE TELL-TALE HEART (1843)

This is of course one of Poe's best known stories today, focusing on the viewpoint of a "perilous psycho" who becomes obsessed with killing an old man who has never done him any harm. The madman does kill his victim and conceals the body. When police investigate the resultant commotion, the killer seems to be pulling off his crime, until he imagines that the dead man's heart is still beating, thus forcing the madman to confess his crime.

An odd touch: the madman becomes obsessed with his victim's "vulture-like" eye, but never states outright that the old man even has more than one.

BERENICE (1835)

As I think I've said, I'm no expert on Poe's career, so I have no encyclopedic knowledge of what stories, poems, and essays the author wrote first, as opposed to their order of publication, for which my only source is THE UNABRIDGED EDGAR ALLAN POE.

All that said, "Berenice" is a quantum leap past all of the other stories, including the one to which I gave the greatest praise, "Ms. Found in a Bottle." It's as if in all of his earlier stories, Poe was dimly imitating some admired model who specialized in both burlesque and insufferable erudition. (Voltaire maybe? A lot of people think ZADIG could've influenced the Dupin stories...)

With Berenice, though, Poe is finally drawing upon themes and symbols that have some intense, however mystifying, personal significance for himself. 

"Berenice" is nearly a catalogue of story-tropes that Poe would use again and again. There's a strangely obsessed narrator-- for once given an actual name, "Egaeus"-- who also suffers from a strange malady. He dwells in a secluded mansion and interacts with almost no one except his female cousin (note: Poe married his 13-year-old cousin the next year). Because of his malady, which causes Egaeus to focus his attention irresistibly on mundane things, he forms a bizarre fixation on Berenice's teeth, though he claims that he has no romantic interest in her (though she has some sort of feeling for him). She has her own malady, a catalepsy that can mistaken for death, but somehow when she apparently dies, no one bothers to check closely to make sure she's really dead (perhaps "Loss of Breath" prefigures this obsession with "living death" scenarios). Though Egaeus sees his cousin buried, he can't get over his obsession with her teeth, and so robs her grave so that he can pry all 32 teeth out of her mouth. To be sure, he performs this act in a trance, and only becomes aware of what he's done shortly before learning that the poor girl, surprise, isn't really, merely, or sincerely dead.

This is an amazingly perverse story for 1835, and it duly shocked the readers of the magazine where it appeared. Poe pleaded that he was just trying to garner readers, but since he kept coming back to these themes, plainly there was some personal interest in them; an exorcism of his personal demons, so to speak.

It's also pleasing that since I consider Poe one of the foremost innovators in crafting stories of "the Uncanny"-- a phenomenological term I explained here and in many other ARCHETYPAL essays-- that what appears to be his first venture into this territory is so much more complex than all the naturalistic and marvelous prose works that preceded BERENICE.