Madness
Many of Poe's short stories are from the perspective of someone who is "mad." Although the narrator at first does not appear mad, we later learn that he is in prison for murder. Like many of Poe's narrators, he maintains that he is not mad, which is a clear indication that he is.
After describing the events of the murder he committed, the whole narrative descends into chaos. When talking about perverseness, the narrator states that "Under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible". We see that these conditions are actually the conditions of psychological abnormalities, that the narrator himself experiences.
Human nature
The impulse for "perverseness" is the same primal desire as the desire to eat or to procreate, as Poe's narrator suggests at the beginning of the story. He argues that humans are inherently self-destructive, and are driven by the imp of the perverse.
Philosophy
Philosophy is a key theme of the text. At the beginning of the story, Poe states that there is something that no "moralists" or thinkers have considered before, which is the nature of "perverseness." Interestingly, we might think of this as an early exploration of human psychology.
He compares the differences between a priori and a posteriori reasoning, which was a key debate in philosophical thought at the time he was writing.
The temptation of the perverse
Poe's narrator argues that knowing we shouldn't do something, makes us want to do it. He illustrates this with two personal examples, with the first example being the desire to murder, even though he knows it is wrong. The second example is after he commits the murder, and knows he shouldn't tell anybody what he has done. It is the knowledge that he shouldn't tell anyone about his actions that drives him to madness and forces him to publicly reveal the murder.
