Tortured Sympathies: Victorian Literature and the Ticking Time-Bomb Scenario

This essay argues that much of the continuing appeal of the ticking time-bomb scenario has to do with the way it exploits deeply held beliefs regarding the relation between pain, sympathy, and the definition of the human that originated in the nineteenth century. These beliefs include the notion that sympathy precludes the infliction of pain; that sympathy is constitutive of humanity; and that in relation to certain kinds of subjects, pain does, in fact, elicit truth.