A Hero of Our Time, my kind gentlemen, is indeed a portrait, but not of one person: it is a portrait compiled from the vices of our entire generation, in their full development. You will tell me again that a person cannot be so vile, and I will tell you that if you believed in the possibility of all those tragic and romantic villains, then why don’t you believe in the reality of Pechorin? If you admired fictions far more terrible and ugly, then why does this character—even as fiction—find no mercy from you? Isn’t it because there’s more truth in him than you would like?..”