Parallelism

Phrases or verses following one another with the same construction, so that the reader compares what changes from one to the next.

In The Idiot

but the main pain, the strongest, perhaps is not in the wounds, but in this: knowing for certain that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now, right now, the soul will fly out of the body, and that you will no longer be a man, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain.

The sequence “in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute” repeats the same structure with shorter and shorter periods. The shrinking of time makes the reader feel the countdown the condemned man feels.

Part One: The Arrival, Myshkin

She loves another, that is what you have to understand! The same way I love her now, the same way she loves another now. And do you know who that other is? It is you!

Part Two: The Painting, Rogozhin

Do you know, I do not understand how one can pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To speak with a person and not be happy to love them! Oh, only I do not know how to say it... and how many beautiful things there are at every step, which even the most lost person finds beautiful? Look at a child, look at God's dawn, look at the grass, how it grows, look into the eyes that look at you and love you...

Part Four: The Denouement, Myshkin