Like many of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, “The Oval Portrait” features a first-person narrator whose particular perspective frames and reinforces the main ideas and themes of the story. The narrator’s wounded condition helps explain his morbid fascination with darkness and horror. It is this fascination with the things that make him feel uncomfortable and his obsession with art that motivates him to discover the story behind the oval portrait. The narrator’s obsession with art is important because it foreshadows and mirrors the artist’s obsession with creating the oval portrait. Thus, the narrator’s own state of mind exemplifies the fine line between love and obsession, a theme that both the portrait’s origin story and the story overall explore. Furthermore, the narrator’s unique perspective drives the plot.

Very little actually happens throughout the story, and so it is the narrator’s descriptions, thoughts, and emotions that provide so much of the content. That the narrator is a highly educated lover of the arts is significant because it provides a particular and well-informed lens through which the house and its contents are interpreted. If this were a less educated or less curious man, the chateau’s strange and disquieting features might go unnoticed. A different man might sleep through the night instead of studying the portraits in the room, and there would be no story. But this narrator’s education and obsession with art motivate him to read about the oval portrait, which in turn gives the plot a strong climax and resolution.