A question asked without expecting an answer, because the answer is already implied, or because what matters is the doubt it exposes.
In The Idiot
everyone also takes me for an idiot, I don't know why; in fact, I was once so ill that at that time I seemed like an idiot; but what kind of idiot am I now, if I myself understand that they take me for one? I go in and think: here they take me for an idiot, and yet I am intelligent, and they don't suspect a thing...
The question “what kind of idiot am I now, if I myself understand that they take me for one?” expects no answer. It makes the prince's reasoning seem logical and undoes the insult with its own logic.
Part One: The Arrival, Myshkin
He valued me at a hundred thousand! [...] Did you really want to bring me into your family? Me, Rogozhin's woman!
Part One: The Arrival, Nastasya
Nature is mocking! Why, he resumed suddenly with ardor, why does it create the finest beings only to mock them afterward?
Part Two: The Painting, Hippolyte
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