[The Train was on Time] is not about a man's "whole life" passing before his eyes in his last hours. A person in genuine danger is more likely to be aware of immediate sensations and needs than of general recollections, and though the soldier Andreas does think back into his past, he does so mainly in terms of simple pleasures that he does not expect to enjoy again, or in terms of the irony of his situation—"life goes on" even though he is probably going to die. To some degree he shares the feeling of the man in Myshkin's story in The Idiot, whose worst thought is that, though he is to be executed, the thousands looking at him are to stay alive; and he shares the perplexity of anyone who, thinking he might not see the end of a certain day, stares with puzzlement and outrage...