Section 1, Part 4 Summary and Analysis

"Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature" The inspiration for this essay was the apparently well-publicized trial of Gaston Dominici, whom a footnote describes as an eighty year old farmer convicted in 1952 of murdering a family found camping near his land. The author begins his examination of the trial by commenting on how Dominici was convicted more by psychology than by fact, and implies that the conviction was essentially fraudulent. He asserts that those prosecuting and judging the trial evaluated Dominici's psychology according to their own standards and/or what they gleaned from books, rather than by coming to a true understanding of the individual. He also suggests that while both judge and accused spoke the same language (French), they spoke very different kinds of French—what might be described as legal and/or psychological French in the case...