![]() I find my wife and daughter asleep by the stove. ![]() I venture out into the storm and find some firewood. I search for firewood, but the cabin is dark and unfamiliar. Beginning as an essay, it discusses the narrators self. I fear that my daughter will somehow be sucked into the blizzard. The Imp of the Perverse is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. The door blows open, and I can see the white blizzard outside. Inside it is dark a fire is burning in a traditional cast iron stove. It is not a familiar place, but I’m not surprised to be here. I don’t know why we are here or how we got here. “I am with my wife and child on the North pole. He challenges us to meet him with the power of self-reflection, ego strength, and restraint, the components of conscious choice. ![]() Posing as merely mischievous, the imp of the perverse proffers a sense of power and grandiosity. The trickster within tempts us to yield to impulse, succumb to negligence, or be recklessly perverse-simply for the sake of indulging the foolish or forbidden. Jung says, “If he has done it secretly, without moral consciousness of it, and remains undiscovered, the punishment can nevertheless be visited upon him…” The impulse to take irrational and even immoral risks can cause inner torment and lead to damaging actions. In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the protagonist acts on his diabolical urge to commit murder, followed by a self-destructive urge to confess it. ![]() What is the imp of the perverse? A fiendish inner spirit can prompt behavior that defies self-interest and even common sense. ![]()
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