James represents the narrator’s interest in Jeffrey Aspern as an obsession. The defining feature of the narrator’s character is the degree to which he idolizes Aspern, and this obsessive fandom is the impetus that drives the novella’s plot. The narrator’s obsession with a dead poet distorts his understanding of himself and prevents him from empathizing and connecting with real, living people.

The narrator is aware of how his obsession with Aspern appears to others: When Mrs. Prest suggests that he seems to expect “to find in them the answer to the riddle of the universe,” he thinks he would prefer the papers to that answer (51). The extreme degree of the narrator’s desire for connection with Aspern is prevalent throughout the novel. He notes that he has “invoked” Aspern and that “it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to tell me that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion” (76). Because the narrative is in first-person perspective, it is difficult to arrive at an objective view of any of the other characters, especially the posthumous object of the narrator’s obsession.