John T. Noonan Jr. the reflections of Prince Myshkin, is "the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence." Feodor Dostoevsky, "The Idiot", 292 (Alan Myers, trans.) (1991). In the vernacular, compassion is trumps. No one can read the accounts of the sufferings of the deceased plaintiffs supplied by their declarations, or the accounts of the sufferings of their patients supplied by the physicians, without being moved by them. No one would inflict such sufferings on another or want them inflicted on himself; and since the horrors recounted are those that could attend the end of life anyone who reads of them must
Demons (Dostoevsky novel) is a local civil servant who has decided to write a chronicle of the strange events that have recently occurred in his town. Despite being a secondary character, he has a surprisingly intimate knowledge of all the characters and events, such that the narrative often seems to metamorphose into that of the omniscient third person. According to Joseph Frank, this choice of narrative perspective enables Dostoevsky "to portray his main figures against a background of rumor, opinion and scandal-mongering that serves somewhat the function of a Greek chorus in relation to the central action." The narrator's voice is intelligent, frequently