Procrastination
The imp of perversity is initially not much of an imp. Examples commence with talking someone to death and then move on to putting off until never what can do today. This introduction to procrastinating is conducted through metaphorical imagery:
“We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow”
The Borderline
Metaphorical imagery is also engaged to clearly delineate the border separating imp-land from the better nature of angels. The narrator describes this division in apocalyptic terms. He is probably thinking about more than mere procrastination:
“We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss — we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.”
Allusion
The metaphorical construction of perversity looks to the familiarity of common literacy to deepen and broaden the context of his continuing explication of his foundational premise. The imp works upon the mind not just like magic, but through the showmanship of the magician:
“By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights.”
The Irony of the Imp
The narrator commits a long-planned, strategically-devised, perfectly executed murder. Ironically, however, it is not this murder which is spurring the narrator to concoct what has so far most a rather dry, pedantic scholarly confession. The imp of the perversity does not fully arrive and give the confession the visceral excitement it so badly needs until the narrator is finally at the point at which his own act of perversity becomes the topic. The irony is that this moment is not the murder, but the moment of confession of that murder which takes place openly within the public square and which reveals the imp to be the master of a bizarre one-person sado-masochistic relationship:
“I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have done it — but a rough voice resounded in my ears — a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder.”
The Confession
The actual confession—the public admission of his terrible crime—is conducted in full view of many shortly thereafter. This revelatory declaration of fact is, naturally, given texture through metaphor:
“The long-imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul.”
