Introducing dialogic freedom -- A father begs for his son's corpse in The Iliad -- Passion and freedom in Dante's Inferno -- Deaf to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice -- The virtuosity of Satan in Paradise Lost -- Shaping the master's vision in "benito cereno" -- The grand inquisitor's silent Christ -- Goading a reader of "in the penal colony" -- Freedom under impossible conditions in Beloved -- Freedom under construction in a polarized world.