The Master and Margarita: Difference between revisions

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''Would you remove all trees and living things from the world to realise your fantasy of basking in naked light?''|'''Woland'''}}

 

First of all, this has nothing to do with any of the Masters from certain [[Doctor Who|television]] [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|shows]], which the novel predates by more than twenty years. And now that we have established that, let's move on.

 

 

The main plot nominally follows [[Satan]], who arrives with his [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] in 1930s Moscow under the guise of a foreign Professor of the occult, Woland. His true intent is to host a periodic carnival of the dead. Much of the humor and social satire in the novel is derived from Woland and his henchmen exposing the numb-skulled bureaucratic officiousness of Soviet society. He is not truly evil, but some of his pranks prove humiliating to the faux aristocracy of the Soviet Union.

 

Among Russian critics, this novel is one of the most favorite targets of the [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]] syndrome, although a story featuring both Jesus and Satan as characters arguably had it coming. It has also seen a lot of adaptations, two of them in Russia (after the fall of the Soviet Union) and plenty abroad. The 2005 miniseries by Vladimir Bortko (famous for a massively popular 1988 adaptation of Bulgakov's earlier ''[[Heart of a Dog]]'') was perhaps the most faithful to the original text, although it was somewhat of a disappointment on the technical side, particularly in regards to questionable casting choices.

* [[Action Girl]]: Margarita, after her transformation into a witch.

* [[Affably Evil]]: Woland.

* [[All Part of the Show]]

* [[Asshole Victim]]: Many of these in Moscow.

* [[Author Appeal]]: Bulgakov's portrayal of the Soviet writer society; arguably also the theology, which he took interest in.

* [[Bigger on the Inside]]: Woland's ballroom.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]

* [[Brought to You by The Letter "S"]]: Margarita made the Master a cap with the letter "M" on it.

* [[Card-Carrying Villain]]

* [[Chase Scene]]

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Ivan the poet - although he is not the hero, but rather a [[Jerkass]] who eventually redeems himself - when he realizes Woland is Satan.

* [[Heroic Sociopath]]: Woland, for some sense of heroic.

* [[Intellectual Animal]]: Behemoth, though he is actually a demon in the form of a large black cat.

* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: Woland says it most blatantly in the first chapter, but the story of Yeshua itself suggests that the Gospels are portrayed in the novel as highly fictionalized [[Memetic Mutation]] of real events, which are themselves revealed through the Master's novel. Matthew Levi, in particular, is likely supposed to become Matthew the Evangelist, and Yeshua himself asserts this:

* [[Lou Cypher]]: In German folk legend, Woland is an old nickname for the Devil, and Mephistopheles in Goethe's ''Faust'' goes one time by this moniker.

* [[Man of Wealth and Taste]]: Woland, who may have inspired Mick and Keith to write that tune

* [[Mega Neko]]: Behemoth.

* [[Mind Screw]]

* [[Mismatched Eyes]]: One of Woland's eyes is bright green, the other one is black. Apparently [[Marilyn Manson]] was also inspired by the book.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Particularly to [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]]'s drama of ''[[Faust]]''.

* [[Show Within a Show]]: The Master's novel.

* [[Smug Snake]]: Lots of bureaucrats and high-ranking functionaries in the Moscow storylines, Caifas in the Jerusalem storyline.

* [[Sympathy for the Devil]]: Literally - it's ''this'' book which inspired the Rolling Stones song, after all.

* [[Talking Animal]]: Behemoth.

* [[That Came Out Wrong]]: In the original and translations to Slavic languages ("Bezdomny" means "Homeless"), Ivan's phone call to the MASSOLIT goes like "It's Ivan, the homeless! I'm calling from the insane asylum!" No wonder the conversation is ''short''.

* [[The Thirties]]: No, not [[The Great Depression]] -- the Soviet thirties, when [[Josef Stalin|Stalin and his cadre of fanatics were consolidating their power]]. (Strictly speaking, the novel is ambiguous on its setting: Critics generally argue that the novel is a mashup of [[The Soviet Twenties]] (when it was begun) and the Thirties.)

* [[Trickster]]: Korovyev and Behemoth.

* [[Two Lines, No Waiting]]: Moscow and Yershalaim.

 

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[[Category:School Study Media]]

[[Category:Small Genres and Unclassified Literature]]

[[Category:Literature]]