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Analysis of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on August 1, 2023

The Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) wrote The Master and Margarita ( Master i Margarita ) between 1928 and early 1940 in a time when the official ideology of the Soviet state was based on militant atheism and obligatory historical optimism. In stark opposition to the Bolshevik’s cultural norms, the novel depicts the devil as the main character and revolves around the grand themes of Christianity.

A “drawer masterpiece,” The Master and Margarita was first published long after the author’s death, between 1966 and 1967, yet in a highly censored form (12 percent of the text was cut by Soviet censors for references to the secret police, nudity, and coarse language). In 1967 a complete version was published in France by the YMCA Press and, soon after that, publication came in Germany by Possev. The uncensored edition was finally published in Moscow in 1973; since then it has been assimilated by the mainstream Soviet and post-Soviet literature and its appreciation has continuously grown. Both its form and themes define The Master and Margarita as a unique masterpiece not only in the Russian literary landscape but also in any Western world tradition ( Salman Rushdie , among others, claims its influence upon The Satanic Verses ). The (mis)alliances between the fantastic and realism, myth with accurate historical fact, theosophy with demonism, romanticism with burlesque proclaim the work’s individuality and position it among the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century.

Mikhail Bulgakov / IMDB

The Master and Margarita is composed of two parts: 32 titled chapters and an epilogue. The novel alternates between three settings and storylines. The first is Moscow in the 1930s, a city visited by Satan/Woland, a “magician” of dubious origin. It tells the events that occur during four days, beginning on a Wednesday and ending on a Saturday in May. Woland arrives with an entourage that includes a grotesquely dressed valet Fagotto, a mischievous, giant black cat Behemoth, a fanged hit man Azazello, a pale-faced Abadonna with death-inflicting gaze, and a witch Gella. The havoc wreaked by this group targets the literary elite, its trade union, MASSOLIT, and its privileged residence, the Griboyedov’s house. The carnivalesque opening of the book presents the clash between the unbelieving head of the literary bureaucracy, Berlioz, and Woland, depicted as an urbane foreign gentleman who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers. The witness to this whole episode is the poet Ivan Bezdomny, whose transformation from “modern” to “traditional” and rejection of literature unifies the narrative. His futile attempt to hunt and capture the eccentric gang and warn of their evil and mysterious nature leads the reader to other central scenes and lands Ivan himself in a lunatic asylum. Here we are introduced to the Master, a bitter author whose desperation over the rejection of his historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ has led him to burn his manuscript and turn his back on the “real” world, including his lover, Margarita. Important episodes in the first part of the novel include other comic gems: Satan’s show at the Variety, satirizing the vanity and greed of the new rich, and the occupation of Berlioz’s fl at by Woland and his gang.

Part 2 introduces Margarita, the Master’s mistress. Desperate to save her lover, she takes Satan’s offer and becomes a witch with supernatural powers on the night of his Midnight Ball (Walpurgis Night), which coincides with the night of Good Friday. This episode links all three elements of the book together, since the Master’s novel also deals with this same spring full moon when Christ is crucified in Jerusalem. The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland talking to Berlioz—“I was there”—and echoed in the pages of the Master’s novel, which concerns Pilate’s meeting with Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus). Throughout the novel, Bulgakov ties Jerusalem and Moscow sometimes through polyphony, sometimes through counterpoint. The third setting is the one to which Margarita provides a bridge. She flies, accompanied by her maid, over the forests and rivers of Mother Russia, and then bathed and cleansed she reenters Moscow as the anointed hostess for Satan’s great Spring Ball. Standing by his side, she welcomes the dark celebrities of human history as they pour up from Hell. She survives this ordeal without breaking, empowered by her unwavering love for the Master and her acknowledgment of darkness as part of human life. As a prize, Satan grants her deepest wish: she frees the Master and lives in poverty and love with him. In an ironic ending, neither Satan nor God thinks this is any kind of life for good people, and the couple leave Moscow with the Devil on Easter Saturday.

While most critics identify these three main settings or story lines within the novel—those of Woland, Ieshua and Pilate, and the Master and Margarita —other critics agree that The Master and Margarita is a “double novel.” Assuming the risk of oversimplification, we can refer to a structure divided clearly between two main narratives: Woland’s coming to Moscow and the story of Ieshua and Pilate in Jerusalem. These two plots have a distinct approach of style and genre, hence the label “double novel”; nevertheless both intrigue through their symbolism. While the Jerusalem story is consistent in narrative voice and style, the Moscow account is erratic in both. Where the ancient tale has an omniscient narrator, Woland, the Moscow narrative poses the question of the narrator, who seems to be a disembodied voice whose reliability and knowledge are hard to establish. The narrative voice oscillates between personal and impersonal, which raises the issue of ambiguity. The three segments of the Ieshua and Pilate story are cohesive in that they all refer and lead to Ieshua’s execution. The ancient plot is detailed with the historical accuracy of the eyewitness and aims to realism. The Moscow chapters, conversely, are protean in style and story lines, with frequently difficult-to-grasp symbols. The plot is intentionally baffling and scattered: Woland’s coming to the Soviet capital triggers a number of narratives that have no apparent connection to one another. Woland’s companions create mayhem in Moscow: Ivan Bezdomny is sent to a lunatic asylum, where he hears an inmate’s (the Master’s) story of his recent experiences. Margarita turns into a witch and after a while, she reunites with the Master.

The Master and Margarita stands out through its uniqueness, a novel pervaded with a mystifying feeling, where the most fanciful occurrences prove realist, while the seemingly most plausible facts turn out to be phantasmagoric. The multiple layers of meaning lead to ambiguities and hence invite the reader’s imagination. A novel of its time (and for all times), The Master and Margarita nevertheless challenges the materialist philosophy, which constituted the basis of Soviet ideology, by revealing that the purpose of art is the revelation of hidden mystery. Continuing the tradition of fiction by Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and the Russian symbolists, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita constitutes the natural development of the Russian novel into the 20th century, a masterpiece that is as much universal as it is Russian.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barratt, Andrew. Between Two Worlds: A Critical Introduction to “The Master and Margarita.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Curtis, Julie A. E. Bulgakov’s Last Decade: The Writer as Hero. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ———. Manuscripts Don’t Burn: Mihail Bulgakov, a Life in Letters and Diaries. London: Bloomsbury, 1991. Edwards, T. R. N. Three Russian Writers and the Irrational. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Hunns, Derek J. Bulgakov’s Apocalyptic Critique of Literature. Lewiston, N.J.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996. Krugovoi, George. The Gnostic Novel of Mikhail Bulgakov: Sources and Exegesis. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991. Pittman, Riitta H. The Writer’s Divided Self in Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Sahni, Kalpana. A Mind in Ferment: Mikhail Bulgakov’s Prose. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humantities Press, 1986. Weeks, Laura. “The Master and Margarita”: A Critical Companion. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996.

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The Master and Margarita

Mikhail bulgakov, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Master and Margarita: Introduction

The master and margarita: plot summary, the master and margarita: detailed summary & analysis, the master and margarita: themes, the master and margarita: quotes, the master and margarita: characters, the master and margarita: symbols, the master and margarita: theme wheel, brief biography of mikhail bulgakov.

Historical Context of The Master and Margarita

Other books related to the master and margarita.

• Full Title: The Master and Margarita
• When Written: 1928-1940
• Where Written: Moscow
• When Published: 1967
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre: Fantasy/Farce/Romance/Satire
• Setting: 20th Century Russia and Yershalaim (Jerusalem) c. AD 30
• Climax: Satan’s Ball
• Antagonist: Woland
• Point of View: Third person omniscient

Extra Credit for The Master and Margarita

Alternate Titles. Bulgakov had numerous earlier titles for The Master and Margarita , many of which placed more emphasis on Woland’s role in the book than the two titular characters. These included “Woland’s Guest Performances” and “An Engineer’s Hoof.”

Rock and Roll. The novel was the inspiration behind The Rolling Stones’ 1968 hit, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

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Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

Or, how to be happy with russian literature.

‘“And what is your particular field of work?” asked Berlioz. “I specialize in black magic.”’

If many Russian classics are dark and deep and full of the horrors of the blackness of the human soul (or, indeed, are about the Gulag), then this is the one book to buck the trend. Of all the Russian classics, The Master and Margarita is undoubtedly the most cheering. It’s funny, it’s profound and it has to be read to be believed. In some ways, the book has an odd reputation. It is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and as a masterpiece of magical realism, but it’s very common even for people who are very well read not to have heard of it, although among Russians you have only to mention a cat the size of a pig and apricot juice that makes you hiccup and everyone will know what you are talking about. Most of all, it is the book that saved me when I felt like I had wasted my life. It’s a novel that encourages you not to take yourself too seriously, no matter how bad things have got. The Master and Margarita is a reminder that, ultimately, everything is better if you can inject a note of silliness and of the absurd. Not only is this a possibility at any time; occasionally, it’s an absolute necessity: “You’ve got to laugh. Otherwise you’d cry.”

For those who already know and love The Master and Margarita , there is something of a cult-like “circle of trust” thing going on. I’ve formed friendships with people purely on the strength of the knowledge that they have read and enjoyed this novel. I have a friend who married her husband almost exclusively because he told her he had read it. I would normally say that it’s not a great idea to found a lifelong relationship on the basis of liking one particular book. But, in this case, it’s a very special book. So, if you are unmarried, and you love it and you meet someone else who loves it, you should definitely marry them. It’s the most entertaining and comforting novel. When I was feeling low about not being able to pretend to be Russian any more, I would read bits of it to cheer myself up and remind myself that, whatever the truth about where I come from, I had succeeded in understanding some important things about another culture. It is a book that takes your breath away and makes you laugh out loud, sometimes at its cleverness, sometimes because it’s just so funny and ridiculous. I might have kidded myself that you need to be a bit Russian to understand Tolstoy. But with Bulgakov, all you need to understand him is a sense of humor. His comedy is universal.

Written in the 1930s but not published until the 1960s, The Master and Margarita is the most breathtakingly original piece of work. Few books can match it for weirdness. The devil, Woland, comes to Moscow with a retinue of terrifying henchmen, including, of course, the giant talking cat (literally “the size of a pig”), a witch and a wall-eyed assassin with one yellow fang. They appear to be targeting Moscow’s literary elite. Woland meets Berlioz, influential magazine editor and chairman of the biggest Soviet writers’ club. (Berlioz has been drinking the hiccup-inducing apricot juice.) Berlioz believes Woland to be some kind of German professor. Woland predicts Berlioz’s death, which almost instantly comes to pass when the editor is decapitated in a freak accident involving a tram and a spillage of sunflower oil. All this happens within the first few pages.

A young poet, Ivan Bezdomny (his surname means “Homeless”), has witnessed this incident and heard Woland telling a bizarre story about Pontius Pilate. (This “Procurator of Judaea” narrative is interspersed between the “Moscow” chapters.) Bezdomny attempts to chase Woland and his gang but ends up in a lunatic asylum, ranting about an evil professor who is obsessed with Pontius Pilate. In the asylum, he meets the Master, a writer who has been locked away for writing a novel about Jesus Christ and, yes, Pontius Pilate. The story of the relationship between Christ and Pilate, witnessed by Woland and recounted by the Master, returns at intervals throughout the novel and, eventually, both stories tie in together. (Stick with me here. Honestly, it’s big fun.)

Meanwhile, outside the asylum, Woland has taken over Berlioz’s flat and is hosting magic shows for Moscow’s elite. He summons the Master’s mistress, Margarita, who has remained loyal to the writer and his work. At a midnight ball hosted by Satan, Woland offers Margarita the chance to become a witch with magical powers. This happens on Good Friday, the day Christ is crucified. (Seriously, all this makes perfect sense when you are reading the book. And it is not remotely confusing. I promise.) At the ball, there is a lot of naked dancing and cavorting (oh, suddenly you’re interested and want to read this book?) and then Margarita starts flying around naked, first across Moscow and then the USSR. Again, I repeat: this all makes sense within the context of the book.

Woland grants Margarita one wish. She chooses the most altruistic thing possible, liberating a woman she meets at the ball from eternal suffering. The devil decides not to count this wish and gives her another one. This time, Margarita chooses to free the Master. Woland is not happy about this and gets her and the Master to drink poisoned wine. They come together again in the afterlife, granted “peace” but not “light,” a limbo situation that has caused academics to wrap themselves up in knots for years. Why doesn’t Bulgakov absolve them? Why do both Jesus and the Devil seem to agree on their punishment? Bulgakov seems to suggest that you should always choose freedom—but expect it to come at a price.

One of the great strengths of The Master and Margarita is its lightness of tone. It’s full of cheap (but good) jokes at the expense of the literati, who get their comeuppance for rejecting the Master’s work. (This is a parallel of Bulgakov’s experience; he was held at arm’s length by the Soviet literary establishment and “allowed” to work only in the theatre, and even then with some difficulty). In dealing so frivolously and surreally with the nightmare society in which Woland wreaks havoc, Bulgakov’s satire becomes vicious without even needing to draw blood. His characters are in a sort of living hell, but they never quite lose sight of the fact that entertaining and amusing things are happening around them. However darkly comedic these things might sometimes be.

While The Master and Margarita is a hugely complex novel, with its quasi-religious themes and its biting critique of the Soviet system, above all it’s a big fat lesson in optimism through laughs. If you can’t see the funny side of your predicament, then what is the point of anything? Bulgakov loves to make fun of everyone and everything. “There’s only one way a man can walk round Moscow in his underwear—when he’s being escorted by the police on the way to a police station!” (This is when Ivan Bezdomny appears, half naked, at the writers’ restaurant to tell them a strange character has come to Moscow and murdered their colleague.) “I’d rather be a tram conductor and there’s no job worse than that.” (The giant cat talking rubbish at Satan’s ball.) “The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat is a drink of paraffin.” (More cat gibberish.)

The final joke of the book is that maybe Satan is not the bad guy after all. While I was trying to recover my sense of humor about being Polish and Jewish instead of being Russian, this was all a great comfort. Life is, in Bulgakov’s eyes, a great cosmic joke. Of course, there’s a political message here, too. But Bulgakov delivers it with such gusto and playfulness that you never feel preached at. You have got to be a seriously good satirist in order to write a novel where the Devil is supposed to represent Stalin and/or Soviet power without making the reader feel you are bludgeoning them over the head with the idea. Bulgakov’s novel is tragic and poignant in many ways, but this feeling sneaks up on you only afterwards. Most of all, Bulgakov is about conjuring up a feeling of fun. Perhaps because of this he’s the cleverest and most subversive of all the writers who were working at this time. It’s almost impossible to believe that he and Pasternak were contemporaries, so different are their novels in style and tone. (Pasternak was born in 1890, Bulgakov in 1891.) The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago feel as if they were written in two different centuries.

Unlike Pasternak, though, Bulgakov never experienced any reaction to his novel during his lifetime, as it wasn’t published until after he had died. One of the things that makes The Master and Margarita so compelling is the circumstances in which it was written. Bulgakov wrote it perhaps not only “for the drawer” (i.e. not to be published within his lifetime) but never to be read by anyone at all. He was writing it at a time of Black Marias (the KGB’s fleet of cars), knocks on the door and disappearances in the middle of the night. Ordinary life had been turned on its head for most Muscovites, and yet they had to find a way to keep on living and pretending that things were normal. Bulgakov draws on this and creates a twilight world where nothing is as it seems and the fantastical, paranormal and downright evil are treated as everyday occurrences.

It’s hard to imagine how Bulgakov would have survived if the novel had been released. Bulgakov must have known this when he was writing it. And he also must have known that it could never be published—which means that he did not hold back and wrote exactly what he wanted, without fear of retribution. (Although there was always the fear that the novel would be discovered. Just to write it would have been a crime, let alone to attempt to have it published.) This doesn’t mean that he in any way lived a carefree life. He worried about being attacked by the authorities. He worried about being prevented from doing any work that would earn him money. He worried about being unable to finish this novel. And he worried incessantly—and justifiably—about his health.

During his lifetime Bulgakov was known for his dystopian stories “The Fatal Eggs” (1924) and “The Heart of a Dog” (1925) and his play The Days of the Turbins (1926), about the civil war. Despite his early success, from his late twenties onwards, Bulgakov seemed to live with an awareness that he was probably going to be cut down in mid-life. He wrote a note to himself on the manuscript of The Master and Margarita : “Finish it before you die.” J.A.E. Curtis’s compelling biography Manuscripts Don’t Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, A Life in Letters and Diaries , gives a near-cinematic insight into the traumatic double life Bulgakov was leading as he wrote the novel in secrecy. I love this book with the same intensity that I love The Master and Margarita . Curtis’s quotes from the letters and the diaries bring Bulgakov to life and are packed full of black comedy and everyday detail, from Bulgakov begging his brother not to send coffee and socks from Paris because “the duty has gone up considerably” to his wife’s diary entry from New Year’s Day 1937 which tells of Bulgakov’s joy at smashing cups with 1936 written on them.

As well as being terrified that he would never finish The Master and Margarita , Bulgakov was becoming increasingly ill. In 1934, he wrote to a friend that he had been suffering from insomnia, weakness and “finally, which was the filthiest thing I have ever experienced in my life, a fear of solitude, or to be more precise, a fear of being left on my own. It’s so repellent that I would prefer to have a leg cut off.” He was often in physical pain with a kidney disease but was just as tortured psychologically. There was the continual business of seeming to be offered the chance to travel abroad, only for it to be withdrawn. Of course, the authorities had no interest in letting him go, in case he never came back. (Because it would make them look bad if talented writers didn’t want to live in the USSR. And because it was much more fun to keep them in their own country, attempt to get them to write things praising Soviet power and torture them, in most cases literally.)

It is extraordinary that Bulgakov managed to write a novel that is so full of humor and wit and lightness of tone when he was living through this period. He grew accustomed to being in a world where sometimes the phone would ring, he would pick it up and on the other end of the line an anonymous official would say something like: “Go to the Foreign Section of the Executive Committee and fill in a form for yourself and your wife.” He would do this and grow cautiously hopeful. And then, instead of an international passport, he would receive a slip of paper that read: “M.A. Bulgakov is refused permission.” In all the years that Bulgakov continued, secretly, to write The Master and Margarita —as well as making a living (of sorts) as a playwright—what is ultimately surprising is that he did not go completely insane from all the cat-and-mouse games that Stalin and his acolytes played with him. Stalin took a personal interest in him, in the same way he did with Akhmatova. There’s some suggestion that his relationship with Stalin prevented Bulgakov’s arrest and execution. But it also prevented him from being able to work on anything publicly he wanted to work on.

How galling, too, to have no recognition in your own lifetime for your greatest work. When the book did come out in 1966-7, its significance was immense, perhaps greater than any other book published in the 20th century. As the novelist Viktor Pelevin once said, it’s almost impossible to explain to anyone who has not lived through Soviet life exactly what this novel meant to people. “ The Master and Margarita didn’t even bother to be anti-Soviet, yet reading this book would make you free instantly. It didn’t liberate you from some particular old ideas, but rather from the hypnotism of the entire order of things.”

The Master and Margarita symbolizes dissidence; it’s a wry acknowledgement that bad things happened that can never, ever be forgiven. But it is also representative of an interesting kind of passivity or non-aggression. It is not a novel that encourages revolution. It is a novel that throws its hands up in horror but does not necessarily know what to do next. Literature can be a catalyst for change. But it can also be a safety valve for a release of tension and one that results in paralysis. I sometimes wonder if The Master and Margarita —the novel I have heard Russians speak the most passionately about—explains many Russians’ indifference to politics and current affairs. They are deeply cynical, for reasons explored fully in this novel. Bulgakov describes a society where nothing is as it seems. People lie routinely. People who do not deserve them receive rewards. You can be declared insane simply for wanting to write fiction. The Master and Margarita is, ultimately, a huge study in cognitive dissonance. It’s about a state of mind where nothing adds up and yet you must act as if it does. Often, the only way to survive in that state is to tune out. And, ideally, make a lot of jokes about how terrible everything is.

Overtly, Bulgakov also wants us to think about good and evil, light and darkness. So as not to be preachy about things, he does this by mixing in absurd humor. Do you choose to be the sort of person who joins Woland’s retinue of weirdos? (Wall-eyed goons, step forward!) Or do you choose to be the sort of person who is prepared to go to an insane asylum for writing poetry? (I didn’t say these were straightforward choices.) On a deeper level, he is asking whether we are okay with standing up for what we believe in, even if the consequences are terrifying. And he is challenging us to live a life where we can look ourselves in the eye and be happy with who we are. There is always a light in the dark. But first, you have to be the right kind of person to be able to see it.

From The Anna Karenina Fix , by Viv Grokop, courtesy Abrams. Copyright 2018, Viv Groskop.

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Themes and Analysis

The master and margarita, by mikhail bulgakov.

The major themes of 'The Master and Margarita' include the conflict between good and evil, the significance of creativity and the arts, and the dangers of authoritarian control. The message of the book is that people may resist persecution and uphold their human ideals by using love, bravery, and the search of the truth.

Article written by Charles Asoluka

Degree in Computer Engineering. Passed TOEFL Exam. Seasoned literary critic.

‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ by Mikhail Bulgakov explores themes like the need, to tell the truth when authority would prefer to cover it up and freedom of the spirit in an oppressive society as it deals with the interaction of good and evil, innocence and guilt, courage and cowardice. The novel’s main themes also center on love and sensuality.

Margarita abandons her spouse out of her devotion to the Master, yet she survives the ordeal. She and the Master are united spiritually and sexually. The story is a riot of sensuous impressions, yet the humorous portions underscore the meaninglessness of sexual fulfillment without love. Nikolai Ivanovich, who becomes Natasha’s hog-broomstick, is a mocking representation of rejecting sexuality for the sake of hollow respectability.

Bravery and Fear in The Master and Margarita

‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ by Mikhail Bulgakov presents a compelling case for bravery over cowardice by labeling the latter as “the worst sin of all.” The love between the master and Margarita, Pontius Pilate’s decision to sentence Yeshua (Jesus) to death in Yershalaim (Jerusalem) two thousand years ago, and the three storylines that make up the novel—the visit of Woland (Satan) and his entourage to Moscow, the love between the master and Margarita, and Pontius Pilate’s condemnation of Yeshua (Jesus) to death—all work together.

Most of the characters in the novel who are from Moscow fall far short of the definition of courage, which is the willingness to stand up against something in the service of the greater good. Woland and his gang’s antics expose the self-interest, greed, and dishonesty of the masses and their collective cowardice, which strengthens the status quo and all of its flaws—and there were many in Soviet society. Woland may or may not have malicious intentions, but regardless, the havoc he causes brings out the worst aspects of society.

In many ways, Bulgakov reveals this moral cowardice. Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, the head of the tenants’ organization on Sadovaya Street, demonstrates how it affects housing distribution by accepting a bribe from Koroviev, Woland’s assistant, to allow them to stay in the flat. The state-approved authors are also cowards who care more about good dining and vacations than they do about making artfully risky or sincere statements. Moreover, Moscow is characterized by an obsession with bureaucracy, where “obedient” citizens frequently attempt to report one another to the covert secret police.

The show by Woland and his gang at the Variety theater, in which they make money fall from the roof and incite the crowd to engage in fighting to snag as much as they can, serves as the culmination of this exposing of cowardice. Hence, self-interested moral cowardice and the refusal to sacrifice one’s security or comfort for anybody else have completely undermined Moscow society.

In the passages of the book that deal with Pontius Pilate, Bulgakov elaborates on his contrast between bravery and cowardice. Pilate exhibits the same kind of cowardice as the Moscow story’s Pilate when he must decide whether to sanction Yeshua Ha-Nozri’s execution. Though he is charmed by Yeshua’s extreme compassion and secretly yearns to set him free, he confirms Yeshua’s death out of fear of the repercussions of acting differently.

This is a combination of his self-interested determination to maintain his hegemon status and a general dread of upsetting the hierarchy (Yershalaim is an environment held together by a delicate balance of power). For two millennia, Pilate feels guilty about his choice and dreams frequently of walking with Yeshua. In these dreams, the two men concur that the execution never took place and that “cowardice is the worst sin of all.” Yeshua, on the other hand, exemplifies truly unselfish heroism by demanding that the water from the executioner’s sponge be given to one of his fellow dying men instead of drinking it himself. Bulgakov thus supports the notion that bravery entails making personal sacrifices for the sake of a greater good.

This idea of bravery is developed by Bulgakov in the Margarita character. She pursues the master despite not even knowing if he is still alive since she has a strong desire to help others. She is willing to take a significant risk by agreeing to host Satan’s Ball alongside Woland because of her fearless determination. Although Woland’s cannot be characterized as “pure evil,” as was previously said, Margarita is unsure whether making a deal with the devil will have dreadful repercussions.

She decides to use a wish that Woland gave her to release Frieda, a tortured soul at the ball, instead of giving in to her want to be with the master, demonstrating her brave willingness to serve others. This devotion is rewarded by a second wish, which does bring the master back despite irking Woland a little. The master is energized by Margarita’s bravery, and as a result, Pilate can be released from his millennium-long purgatory. So, selfless acts of courage in the story have a beneficial ripple effect that benefits everyone who participates.

Censorship in the Soviet Union

The editorial board rejects The Master’s book, and its “Pilatism” is harshly criticized by reviewers. The Master suffers from depression and is sent to a mental facility because he is unable to publish the novel into which he has invested all of his life and energy. The censorship practiced by the Soviet Union on writers while Bulgakov was writing is being parodied in this instance. That troubled him and constrained his ability to pursue an art career. This means that Bulgakov himself can be seen in The Master.

Woland’s presence fills the gap left in Soviet society by the censorship of Christian principles. He and his goons exploit the censorship of religion, bringing it to light in the process.

The Duality of Good and Evil in Man

The prevalence of evil in human nature is clear, given that the majority of the individuals in the book are connected to Pilate in some way. Before finally finding salvation, Pilate endures two thousand years of suffering for his sins. The Master is particularly connected to Pilate because he published a book solely about the historical figure and because of his peculiar character traits, like his inability to find solace in the moonlight.

The Master is a victim of Soviet society, much like Yeshua Ha-Nozri, though. Varenukha throws out his arms “as though he were being crucified,” and Frieda “dropped to the floor with her arms out, making a cross,” are examples of other characters who are similar to Yeshua.

Woland and his minions use people’s inherent evil tendencies to their advantage to punish them for their transgressions. But ultimately, most of the characters receive some sort of pardon. Although Woland is the devil, he is not depicted as being wholly bad and can be persuaded to be forgiving and even nice.

Love and Hope

Without a doubt, the core of ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ is love. The master and Margarita, the book’s namesakes, are committed to one another even when their journeys take them in very different directions and are aware of their love for one another from the moment they first meet (although they are both already married). So, it is demonstrated that love is more than just a shared emotion between two people but also a power that controls their lives, akin to fate or destiny. Love also represents a form of hope, and because of the master and Margarita’s dedication to one another, this optimism keeps them both alive. In the book, hope and love coexist together, much like lovers.

The narrator speaks directly to the reader at the beginning of Book Two to describe the kind of love that the master and Margarita have for one another. The rest of the book is therefore informed by this definition, giving the impression that their love will eventually bring them together. The narrator specifically criticizes the “vile tongues” of “liars” who claim that this kind of love doesn’t exist by describing this love as “genuine, faithful, and forever.” After that, the narrator begs the reader to “join” them to experience “such a love.” The discussion of this kind of love then permeates the entirety of the book. Bulgakov wants his readers to experience this love and see how it overcomes the suffering of both individuals.

The book challenges the reader to consider their relationship to love by arguing for its existence: are their loves “true,” “loyal,” and “everlasting”; and if not, why not? Or is this the kind of love that is uncommon and not available to everyone?

The solution appears to be based on hope and faith; everyone, according to Bulgakov’s book, should believe in this form of love. The master and Margarita remain in love with one another while not knowing whether the other is xstill alive. Their lives have meaning and purpose thanks to this idea; in fact, it keeps them alive.

The master’s and Margarita’s perspectives on their love, however, differ significantly. Margarita never loses hope that she will locate her sweetheart, but the master purposely avoids getting in touch with her because he fears that the rejection of his masterpiece has driven him insane. He believes that freeing her is the best way to show his love for her. Nonetheless, despite being apart from one another, both characters make an effort to preserve their love as much as they can.

How does Goethe’s ‘Faust’ relate to ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘?

The epigraph of ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ opens with a quotation from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Faust. The traditional tale of Faust, also known as Dr. Faustus, selling his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power, is retold in the play Faust. The concept of a Faustian agreement or bargain, in which a character exchanges something of metaphysical significance (such as their soul) for material wealth or power, is rooted in the tale of Faust. The Faustian pact’s conventional meaning is challenged in ‘ The Master and Margarita .’ The Devil appears in ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ and strikes deals with the characters. Goethe’s “Faust” is a metaphor for the bargain Woland makes with the characters he encounters. One, in which, they sell their soul for material gain.

What is ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ really about?

The fight between good and evil is the subject of ‘ The Master and Margarita .’ Through the portrayal of characters that represent these conflicting forces, the novel examines the nature of good and evil. Woland is portrayed as a dynamic and humorous character who sheds light on the moral decay of those around him. He and his retinue cause chaos in Moscow by manipulating and torturing people who are subject to their egotistical ambitions. Margarita, on the other hand, is a good and selfless person. She is persistent in her affection for the Master and her willingness to support him despite the challenges she endures. Her bravery and selfless deeds operate as a foil to the devil’s malice.

Is ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ satire?

Bulgakov utilizes humor in the story of ‘ The Master and Margarita ‘ to criticize the Soviet Union’s leadership as well as the social and cultural conventions of the day. Bulgakov satirizes the coercive nature of the Soviet state and the suppression of artistic expression through the portrayal of figures like the devil, who reveals the moral degeneration of those around him, and the Master, whose work is banned by the authorities.

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The Master and Margarita

57 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-12

Part 1, Chapters 13-18

Part 2, Chapters 19-25

Part 2, Chapters 26-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

The Master and Margarita are permitted to spend eternity in peace rather than go to heaven or hell. Is this a reward or a punishment?

Woland is the adopted identity of Satan. How does he use this identity to play with people’s preconceptions about good and evil?

In what ways does The Master and Margarita satirize bureaucratic systems?

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• Visiting Scholars

Margarita Uncovered: Sexuality, Power, and Gender in Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

Michaela Magdalena Juklova, University of California, San Diego, University of Warwick

This essay explores the sexual politics of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita , with a special focus on the female heroine Margarita. Despite her dynamic nature, suffering and display of bravery that supersedes many of the male character’s in the novel, she is denied the agency that she deserves based on her gender. Her main weapon that she uses to combat this unfair situation is her sexuality, which brings her not only to her Master, whose novel she adopts as a child and towards whom she acts in a motherly manner, but also to Woland. I argue that Margarita was a witch before she met the supernatural characters from Woland’s troupe and before she symbolically bathed herself in the ointment given to them. Because of her sexuality and internalized child-like behavior, she is an attractive character and hence she is both feared by and attractive to men. While it is never explicitly mentioned in the novel that she has sexual intercourse with Woland in order to save her beloved master, I argue that the textual evidence points towards this act, as she in some ways replaces Woland’s previous helper, Hella. This situates her in a position of a "holy whore" character, a kind of Dostoevskian prostitute. By being seen as this, Margarita provides a much needed female character similar to that of Mary of Magdala for the biblical Yeshua chapters of the book, which are missing a female element.

Download file: juklova-vol-five-mn-fg5.pdf

Published: Thursday, May 3, 2012

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In the section Annotations of this website you can read mo-re on Bulgakov's satirical des-cription of the life in the Soviet Union. In this section are explained, per chap-ter, all typical notions, names of people and places, quotations and expressions from the novel, and how they are related to the politi-cal, social, economical and cultural context.

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‘Bromakase’ Is the New Steakhouse

The power protein rituals of man dining are taking over the once staid world of premium sushi.

Credit... Ryan Garcia

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By Brett Anderson

• Published May 21, 2024 Updated May 23, 2024

If you’re looking for the moment when American omakase restaurants began to threaten steakhouses as the preferred venues for young men of means to commune around prohibitively expensive protein, you could do worse than the weekend of Jan. 8, 2021.

That’s when Joe Rogan walked into Sushi Bar ATX , in Austin, Texas.

“Best sushi I’ve ever had in my life,” he wrote in an Instagram post , which has 182,000 likes.

The comedian and podcaster had recently moved to town from Los Angeles. So had Phillip Frankland Lee, the chef of Sushi Bar at the time, which he had opened as a pop-up, partly to stay afloat while his California restaurants were shuttered by pandemic lockdowns.

“I hope you decide to move here full time!” added Mr. Rogan, who has 19 million Instagram followers.

By the next morning, Mr. Lee said, the waiting list for Sushi Bar’s 10 seats was thousands of names long. Soon after, Mr. Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee, his wife and business partner, officially relocated.

Austin has since become an epicenter of omakase’s improbable rise into mainstream restaurant culture — making it, in Mr. Lee’s words, “the hottest concept in America right now.”

Traditional Japanese omakase sushi is a tranquil dining ritual, notable for its restraint, in which an itamae, or sushi master, serves a series of bite-size dishes to a small group of diners seated an arm’s length away. In contrast, Mr. Lee’s signature moves include blowtorching bone marrow to melt over eel and painting hamachi with corn pudding sauce. Sushi Bar ATX, now a permanent restaurant under the direction of Adept Hospitality, also offers luxe add-ons like Wagyu beef topped with caviar (a $20 bite), which along with shaved black truffles and foie gras are now de rigueur.

These menus and their devotees constitute a new variety of sushi experience — a social phenomenon as much as a culinary one — which The New York Times critic Pete Wells has christened “bromakase.”

In many ways, the bromakase has taken aspects of the high-end American steakhouse — excessive tabs, conspicuous consumption of premium meats and a masculine, expense-account atmosphere — and given them a modern, worldly gloss. The portions are smaller, but the prices make it possible to spend even more money even more quickly.

Like steakhouses, they are a recognizable, replicable experience now common nationwide. Just as red-leather booths and dark oak paneling trigger the Pavlovian expectation of a frigid martini and a glistening rib-eye, intimate counters from Omaha to Austin to Chicago to Denver promise a multicourse procession of jewel-like fish flown overnight from Japan.

“I see a lot of gentlemen with other gentlemen wearing suits,” said Maya Takano, a Houston food blogger , who considers omakases her favorite type of restaurant. They are also the type she gets asked to recommend most. “People are like: ‘Hey, I’m willing to spend this much money, but I want to be sure I go to the right place.’”

Not everyone is a fan of the new omakase boom, though.

Bobbi Kim, whose Instagram handle is the Uni Hunter , learned to appreciate Japanese food while growing up in Hawaii and omakase as an adult in New York City. To her, a new generation of restaurants are omakases in name only.

“This might sound very harsh, but there’s been a bastardization of the experience,” Ms. Kim said. “My friends and I call them fauxmakase.”

As recently as five years ago, traditional sushi omakases were found mainly in New York and on the West Coast in the United States.

But in a 2020 review , Mr. Wells identified the 2013 opening of Sushi Nakazawa , in New York City, as a turning point in American omakase. The restaurant’s chef, Daisuke Nakazawa, is a former apprentice to the Japanese sushi master Jiro Ono, the star of the 2011 documentary “ Jiro Dreams of Sushi ,” a touchstone for both American omakase chefs and fans.

While Nakazawa enjoyed a period where “its name became a metonym for excellence in the art of raw fish,” Mr. Wells wrote, its popularity with non-connoisseurs opened the door to a wave of omakase restaurants “inspired less by Japanese customs than by modern New York stagecraft.”

Mr. Lee belongs to a generation of sushi chefs who have embraced omakase while shrugging off some of its norms. Their restaurants often feature cocktail lounges, hip-hop soundtracks and colorful sauces, all of which were unthinkable not too long ago.

Saine Wong , the chef at Toshokan in Austin, is even known to pull out his guitar to lead singalongs after meals, which can include “nigiri” built from potato pavé and braised short rib.

These new-school omakase restaurants have two big things in common with many of their forebears: high prices and limited seating. In fact, three of the five most expensive Michelin-starred restaurants in the United States are omakases, including the most expensive, Masa , in New York City, where dinner for one at the counter is $950, not including tax or drinks.

Most omakases are not that expensive, but a cynic could still reasonably describe them as places you can’t afford and probably can’t get into even if you could.

This extreme exclusivity is a primary reason so many high-income diners are turning away from steakhouses and toward omakases for special-occasion dinners, said David Rodolitz, chief executive of the company that owns Ito, an omakase with locations in New York City and Las Vegas.

“I think it’s a bit of a flex, from people’s social-currency standpoint,” Mr. Rodolitz said. “It’s cool to be in a place where other people can’t get in. And sushi photographs very well, compared to a large, dark piece of meat.”

In a March episode of “Free Food Podcast,” hosted by the New York City restaurant critic Ryan Sutton, Adam Coghlan, a London-based editor, said omakase restaurants where dinner for two easily exceeds $1,000 “are aimed squarely at the finance industry and the super wealthy” and don’t contribute to “food culture in any meaningful sense.”

Mr. Rodolitz said he opened Ito in TriBeCa in 2022 because he loves sushi, but also because omakase is an enticing business proposition. Ito is roughly the size of a typical steakhouse’s barroom, with a small fraction of a steakhouse’s employees.

“Generally, you need more square feet to do more revenue,” Mr. Rodolitz explained. “We may pay a few more points in our food costs, but we get a wild amount of percentage points back in labor and occupancy.”

Ito is a hybrid of traditional and new-school American omakase. The menu intersperses refined nigiri with small plates of raw fish, like Japanese halibut with apple vinegar gelée, that evoke Italian crudo; savory courses conclude with a slice of blowtorched Wagyu beef, naturally, covered in shaved black truffle.

On a temperate night in February, Mr. Ito was behind the counter, joking with customers that the menu was so expensive — $295 per person — because the fish “flies first class” from Japan.

The music — loud enough to hear, quiet enough to talk over — swerved from Bell Biv DeVoe to Mobb Deep. The restaurant’s 16 seats were occupied by diners in their 20s, 30s and 40s, most of them men. One said he ate at the restaurant regularly, usually with “my boys,” though he was with “the wife” on this night. After the man ordered post-meal extras — an uni and caviar handroll for himself, osetra-topped toro nigiri for his wife — the couple did a shot with Mr. Ito.

Mr. Rodolitz said the number of Ito locations he can open is limited by the relative scarcity of chefs as capable as his partners, Masa Ito and Kevin Kim, but the group is interested in “scalable concepts” like its Bar Ito property that can be expanded “without sacrificing the omakase experience.”

When the second location of Sushi Nakazawa opened in Washington, D.C. in 2018, in what was then the Trump International Hotel, it helped seed the notion that you could drag-and-drop an omakase restaurant into multiple locations without diminishing the brand.

From their Texas base, Mr. Lee and Ms. Kallas-Lee have done just that. They parted ways with the investors at Sushi Bar ATX in 2022, but now oversee nine omakase restaurants called Sushi by Scratch , with locations in Miami, Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles.

“I really wanted to try to do something big with this cuisine,” Mr. Lee said. “And you can’t do that with one 10-seat restaurant in one city.”

Critics of omakase chain-ification say that it can be a cash-grab driven by investors, and that it has a homogenizing effect encapsulated by a January headline in D Magazine: Here’s Your Guide to Downtown Dallas’ New Near-Identical Omakase Spots .

The subjects of the story were outposts of Sushi by Scratch and Sushi Bar, whose current owners, Adept Hospitality, have opened locations in Miami, Chicago and Dallas, with another one set to open in Nashville this summer.

Jonathan Husby, an Adept co-founder, said there’s plenty of room in the marketplace for traditional omakase and restaurants like Sushi Bar, where “you don’t have to be a die-hard fish lover to enjoy the menu.”

“We’ve never been private equity,” said Mr. Husby, whose company’s website address is adeptprivateequity.com. “We’re a traditional hospitality group.”

The omakase boom in Austin has not let up . Craft Omakase , which opened in December, represents something of a backlash against the bromakase-drift of the local sushi scene.

Charlie Wang, an owner, said Craft was inspired by a short stint he spent working at Sushi Bar. That experience is why Craft doesn’t offer extra dishes for extra charge, something he said “just feels a little bit tacky.”

He also described Craft’s food, which blends mostly unadorned nigiri with cross-cultural dishes like an aguachile made with leche de tigre, as an antidote to the upcharge items that have become bromakase staples.

“When it comes to Japanese cuisine, restraint is what you want to achieve,” he said. “It’s not hard to put truffle and caviar and foie gras on everything.”

David Utterback, a Nebraska chef who considers a youthful pilgrimage to Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo as a life-altering inspiration, is skeptical that American omakases are maintaining standards as they spread. “Because of this boom of omakase counters over the last five or six years, anyone who’s ever worked at a sushi counter now feels like they can just charge triple,” he said.

Mr. Utterback’s first restaurant, Yoshitomo , included an omakase counter when it opened in Omaha in 2017. And last year, he opened a stand-alone six-seat omakase called Ota , which a recent profile of him in The Washington Post called “one of America’s best sushi restaurants.”

The self-taught chef, who is the son of a Japanese mother and American father, is a traditionalist in spirit and an innovator in practice, as with the Wagyu he tops with sea urchin butter and calls “prairie tuna.”

While Ota’s $265 dinner isn’t cheap, Mr. Utterback said he’s uncomfortable with how many new American omakases seem to exist primarily to attract ultrawealthy diners.

This month, shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway, the Omaha-based conglomerate lead by Warren Buffett, streamed to town for an annual meeting. Many were surprised, Mr. Utterback said, to discover that Ota was closed, as he busied himself preparing another new restaurant opening.

“I opened this counter for my city. I didn’t open the counter for out-of-town guests,” he explained. “But now they’re coming here.”

Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .

An earlier version of this article misattributed a quote from the “Free Food Podcast.” It was said by Adam Coghlan, not Ryan Sutton.

How we handle corrections

Brett Anderson joined the Food desk as a contributor in July 2019. He was restaurant critic and features writer at The Times-Picayune, in New Orleans, from 2000 to 2019. He has won three James Beard awards, including the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award, and was named Eater's Reporter of the Year in 2017 for his reporting on sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. More about Brett Anderson

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The Master and Margarita

By mikhail bulgakov, the master and margarita summary and analysis of book one - chapters 1 -2.

Chapter 1: "Never Speak to Strangers"

As the story opens, it is a hot spring evening and Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz , the chair of the board of a Moscow literary society Massolit, is walking near the Patriarch's Pond with Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, a poet who uses the pseudonym "Homeless." Berlioz is reprimanding Ivan for the poem he has commissioned for his magazine: it was supposed to deny that Jesus Christ ever existed, but instead it merely it vilifies him. Berlioz discusses common elements of religions through history as an extremely tall, thin, unusual-looking man approaches them. It is the philosopher Woland, whom the reader will later learn is the devil. They assume he is a foreigner until he asks to join their conversation in perfect Russian.

The stranger engages the two men and questions their atheism, invoking the writings of philosopher Immanuel Kant, among others, mentioning that he had recently had a discussion over breakfast with Kant. That and other bizarre comments lead Berlioz and Homeless to suspect that he is crazy. Woland points out that men are at times "unexpectedly moral," meaning that they could die at any time, so they cannot accurately predict what they will be doing that very evening. He even foreshadows Berlioz's death in chillingly accurate detail - but at this point, Ivan and Berlioz still assume he is just ranting.

Ivan dislikes Woland immediately, and accuses him of being insane. Woland calls Ivan by his full name, although Ivan has not yet revealed it, and produces a copy of his recently published verses. The two Russians pull away from the stranger to try to determine his identity. They decide he is some sort of spy, but when they return, Woland somehow has knowledge of what they talked about in their private conversation. He introduces himself as a Professor of black magic and history. He then reminds them that Jesus truly did exist, and embarks upon a tale recounting Jesus' final hours.

Chapter 2: “ Pontius Pilate ”

The second chapter, which the reader knows is the story as told by Woland to Berlioz and Ivan, opens at the palace of Herod in Jeruslaem on the eve of Passover. Pontius Pilate, the Procurator of Judea, has been suffering from a severe headache and is extremely bothered by the smell of rose oil, which seems to be following him. Yeshua Ha-Nozri (which means Jesus the Nazarene) is brought before him, accused of inciting the people of Jerusalem to destroy the temple. Pilate questions Yeshua about these allegations. When Yeshua calls him "good man," Pilate insists that he is to be called "Hegemon," and orders the centurion Mark Rat-Killer to beat him.

The questioning continues, and Pilate becomes annoyed with Yeshua, who answers his questions honestly. Yeshua explains how Matthu Levi follows him around, scribbling on a parchment things that Yeshua has never said. Pilate is intrigued when Yeshua somehow knows about why is unhappy, both at this moment in time and with his life in general: he even knows that Pilate just wants to be with his dog. Pilate does not want to condemn Yeshua, but when he asks Yeshua about his conversation with Yehudah of Kerioth (Judas), he realizes he cannot free him. Yehudah had set him up, and asked him in front of hidden guards what his views were on state authority. When Yeshua said that he believed "that a time will come when there shall be neither Caesars, nor any other rulers." Pilate knows that anyone who publicly and openly undermines the authority of Julius Caesar must be punished.

Along with the high priest Joseph Kaifa (Ciaphus), Pilate addresses the crowd gathered beneath the palace in Greek, and asks who the Sanhedrin (high temple) wishes to free on the eve of this great holiday: the robber Bar-Rabban or Yeshua Ha-Norzri? Although he has already confirmed Yeshua’s sentence himself, Pilate asks Kaifa three times to confirm that it is indeed Bar-Rabban who is to be freed. There is a private quarrel between the two men over this decision, but Pilate feels powerless to reverse it. Pilate takes a moment to speak to Aphranius , but the reader does not yet know the man's name, only that his "face was half-concealed by his hood, although the sun's rays could not possibly disturb him in this room." The decision is announced, and Pilate, unable to look at the group of prisoners, leaves the scene as troops assemble to make preparations for the day’s executions.

Before the sighting of the stranger, who turns out to be Professor Woland , we encounter the first instance of the metaphor of a needle through the heart. Berlioz stops hiccuping from the apricot soda he has just imbibed, because "his heart thumped and dropped somewhere for a second, then returned, but with a blunt needle stuck in it." He is overtaken by fear, since he is about to be approached by the devil, who will predict (and perhaps even bring about) his freak death.

The narrator uses the technique of direct address, and begins the confusing characterization of himself as a storyteller with a distinct personality, and unclear range of knowledge. Throughout the story there is incongruity between an omniscient narrator, who knows the characters' thoughts, and a narrator who is a character himself with limited knowledge, sometimes only hearsay. In Chapter 1, he uses direct address to describe Berlioz's reaction to the stranger: "Well, perhaps it was not so much that he liked him, but how shall I put it... was intrigued by him, I guess."

Language that refers to the devil is used throughout the book, as if the characters somehow know whose presence they are in. In Chapter 1, it is also used to reveal to the reader who the stranger is before the two Russian men realize it. Homeless thinks to himself, "What the devil does he want?" And "The devil... have you ever!..."

In Chapter 2, the character of the secretary is used as comic relief during Yeshua's hearing. His reactions serve as benchmarks in Yeshua's testimony and the effect it is having. When Yeshua denies intending to destroy the Temple, the secretary is astonished. When Yeshua tells how Matthu Levi first called him a dog, but how he finds no offense in that term, the secretary looks to Pilate to see his reaction. When Yeshua talks about Pilate's headache, the secretary stares at him "with bulging eyes;" when he begins to predict the storm and speaks to Pilate as an equal, the secretary "turned deathly pale and dropped the scroll on the floor."

Chapter 2 introduces the world of Pontius Pilate, which exists in the stories of Woland, the devil, and as the manuscript of the Master. The two realities are combined, and the world seems to also exist simultaneously with the world of Moscow, where the main story takes place. Of course, Pontius Pilate's world resembles the story of Good Friday and Easter in the New Testament of the Bible, but there are very important inconsistencies: for instance, Matthu Levi being a follower who makes up stories about Yeshua, rather than a relater of the truth.

The sun marks the days events, and will play an important role in the passage of time throughout the worlds of the different stories. In Chapter 2, it is personified as "scorching Yershalayim during those days with extraordinary fury." When it becomes clear that Yeshua knows what is going on in Pilate's mind, Pilate notices that "the sun was already quite high over the hippodrome, that a ray had penetrated under the colonnade and was creeping up to Yeshua's worn sandals, and that he was trying to step out of the sun." After Kaiyapha tells Pilate for the third time that he will not have Yeshua released, "the firey sphere was almost overhead."

The Master and Margarita Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Master and Margarita is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What happens at the party on Thursday?

On Thursday, the Master and Margarita are reunited.

What decision does Natasha make on Thursday?

On Thursday, Natasha makes the decision to reject her old life in favor of remaining a witch.

What is Pilate doing on Wednesday?

On Wednesday, Pilate is hearing the case against Jesus in Jerusalem.

Study Guide for The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita study guide contains a biography of Mikhail Bulgakov, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Master and Margarita
• The Master and Margarita Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Master and Margarita.

• Sin and Redemption
• Cowardice and Consequences in "Master and Margarita"
• Bulgakov's Devil: Not so evil after all: Gnostic Elements in The Master and Margarita
• Musical Influences and Inspirations from The Master: Music and Meaning in Bulgakov’s Masterpiece and Beyond

Lesson Plan for The Master and Margarita

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Master and Margarita
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Master and Margarita Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Master and Margarita

• Introduction
• Interpretations
• The Spring Festival Ball at Spaso House

BU Hub Turns Six—and It’s More Important Than Ever

With workers frequently changing jobs and careers, faculty and students reflect on the value and challenges of boston university’s groundbreaking general-education curriculum.

Students in the History of Boston University summer 2021 Hub course taught by Daryl Healea (STH’01, Wheelock’11) (far left) embark on a walking tour around Boston to view historical BU locations. Photo by Jake Belcher

  BU Hub Turns Six—and It’s More Important Than Ever

Alene bouranova.

Modern Greek Culture and Film. Marine Biology. Introduction to Internet Technologies and Web Programming. History of Boston University. Political Economy in China. Ceramics I. 

These are just a selection of the nearly 2,000 classes that qualify for the Boston University Hub , BU’s general-education undergraduate program that has a home in the College of Arts & Sciences. 

With the days of employees staying with one company for decades, or even a lifetime, long gone, and less than 30 percent of college graduates working in the same field they majored in, experts say it’s more important than ever that workers carry a diverse skill set that’s easily transferable between companies and career paths. Today’s average worker will have 12 jobs in their life, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education .

The Hub, which launched in 2018 and just marked its six-year anniversary, is intended for just this purpose. It’s also marking the inaugural mandatory five-year review period for the first round of Hub courses added to the program.

The Hub combines gen-ed principles—giving students a set of versatile skills they can carry into their careers—with a framework of learning outcomes that can be applied to all fields. That means students have almost limitless options to choose from when meeting their major’s requirements: courses differ widely—from, say, Archaeological Science to Religion and Hip Hop—but that’s precisely what makes the program a standout among higher education institutions. 

“When I participate in higher-ed conferences about general education, staff from other universities are always awed by the scale and ambition of what we’ve accomplished,” says David Carballo , a professor of anthropology, archaeology, and Latin American studies in CAS and former assistant provost for general education. Consider: it’s not uncommon for other universities to have general education offerings of around 100 to 200 courses, Carballo says. 

That doesn’t mean the Hub is without some obstacles. 

Some have complained that the program can be unwieldy and overly complicated. For students who come into BU with no Advanced Placement credits, it can be challenging to fit all 26 Hub requirements into their schedule while also meeting requirements for majors and minors. The same is true for students who switch majors and find themselves with a brand-new set of requirements or for those whose majors don’t have enough overlap with Hub classes. 

But in a time when the American public increasingly questions the value of higher education, ensuring that curricula translate to employment outcomes has never been more vital. For schools with mandatory gen-ed requirements, like BU, the pressure is on to give students the best possible background and skill sets that will help them once they graduate and enter the workforce. 

Hub administrators are aware of its limitations. They’re also mindful of the larger struggles that plague general education, which is why the Hub is so valuable in today’s economic pipeline, Carballo says: “Our ‘big tent’ approach has challenges for sure, but it provides students with just so much choice and flexibility.”

How the Hub works

The Hub requires students to satisfy 26 requirements across six essential capacities: 1) Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Historical Interpretation, 2) Scientific and Social Inquiry, 3) Quantitative Reasoning, 4) Diversity, Civic Engagement, and Global Citizenship, 5) Communication, and 6) Intellectual Toolkit. Each one has subcategories and those subcategories make up the Hub requirements. 

Different courses satisfy different numbers and types of Hub requirements. For example, the course Visual Arts Drawing satisfies both “aesthetic exploration” and “creativity/innovation,” which, respectively, fall under Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Historical Interpretation and Intellectual Toolkit. The Hub structure is laid out here . 

Students are free to choose the courses they want to take. All of BU’s undergraduate schools and colleges offer courses with Hub requirements. Most undergrads are able to satisfy their Hub requirements within 10 to 12 courses, according to the Hub website. Undergraduate transfer students are placed on an accelerated path and meet them within four to five courses.

The Hub also offers a variety of specialty courses , from a two-part introduction to social and racial justice to Cross-College Challenge courses, interdisciplinary electives that put students from different colleges into teams and charge them with solving a real-world problem. And then there are cocurricular courses, or ungraded electives, that focus on a particular Hub area and fulfill one requirement. An example? BU’s Marching Band, which earns members a Hub credit on teamwork and collaboration.

The point of the Hub is to impart a diverse but purposeful knowledge set to students while they earn required credits. (All undergraduate majors at BU require a certain number of gen-ed credits.) The six essential capacities that BU’s General Education Committee settled on blend critical thinking with global and historical awareness, in addition to setting students up with the communication skills they’ll need in the working world.

“Training students to be broad, engaged thinkers, to have transferable skills, and to be good citizens are the three pillars of the program,” Carballo says.

Faculty and the Hub

The Hub isn’t just for students. It also allows flexibility and autonomy for faculty. The Hub isn’t mandatory for professors and lecturers—they have always been free to choose whether or not to participate. Faculty who opt in can incorporate up to three requirements in a course’s curriculum. (Some science labs can fulfill four.) Once a faculty member has a proposed curriculum written out, they submit it to a Hub peer review committee for approval. The committee, comprising fellow faculty members, then reviews and recommends any tweaks.

“What I’ve really appreciated about the Hub is that it requires that we, as instructors, include student-facing explanations for what students are gaining in our courses in terms of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind, rather than only in terms of the class’s content,” says Kathleen Vandenderg , a master lecturer in rhetoric in the College of General Studies and a member of the General Education peer review committee.

Vandenberg teaches two Hub courses in CGS, Rhetoric 103 and Rhetoric 104. Students in those courses can earn three Hub requirements each under the Communication and Intellectual Toolkit capacities (such as “research and information literacy” and “digital multimedia expression”). In naming these student outcomes, Vandenberg says, “we are making salient the many ways in which we understand, interpret, and interact with the past, the present, and the future. And we are identifying different approaches to understanding the world.”

What I’ve really appreciated about the Hub is that it requires that we, as instructors, include student-facing explanations for what students are gaining in our courses in terms of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind, rather than only in terms of the class’s content. Kathleen Vandenderg

“Some students will primarily learn to understand their study and work through data,” she continues, “some through aesthetic experiences, some through the study of primary texts and historical artifacts—these capacities highlight that there are many ways to move through the world intellectually and creatively.” 

The Hub evolves

The Hub was designed to constantly evolve, says Lynn O’Brien Hallstein , a CGS professor of rhetoric and current assistant provost for general education. 

“The Hub has always been very mindful of responding to student needs,” O’Brien Hallstein says, “in addition to developing new and exciting ways that make it easier for students to earn their requirements.” She says she and her team regularly check in with academic advisors at the schools and colleges, as well as consulting BU Student Government for feedback. 

One recurring request from students: “pathways” of curated courses to follow in the Hub. That prompted two curricular pathways for students: social and racial justice and environment and society. 

And nothing is set in stone. When the Gen-Ed Committee established the Hub, it built mandatory five-year reviews for Hub courses into the charter. The fall 2023 semester marked the first review. There were 641 courses to review, O’Brien Hallstein says. She and the peer review committee asked faculty members to reflect on their courses and identify what did and didn’t work, and whether or not to change the Hub requirements their course is associated with. 

“We really are trying to build in best practices and give faculty the opportunity to think about how a course is working for them, their students, and for major requirements,” O’Brien Hallstein says.

While that can involve a lot of paperwork, faculty say the Hub framework prods them to be better educators.

“Developing a good class that meets the needs of our learners isn’t a given—just because we may be experts in our field doesn’t make us pedagogical experts,” says Sophie Godley (SPH’17), director of undergraduate education in the School of Public Health and a clinical associate professor. “The HUB pushes all of us at BU to be better, and that is a gift to our community.”

Godley teaches several Hub courses, including the Social and Racial Justice advocacy specialty courses. The Hub helps keep her curricula on track, Godley says. “A challenge for anyone teaching in 2024 is the sheer volume of information, knowledge, research, and change that we all—students and faculty alike—encounter on a daily basis,” she says.

“In a field like mine, and with the variety of courses that I am privileged to teach at BU, narrowing down topics, ideas, theories, skills is an ongoing challenge, so that I don’t end up fire-hosing information in class. The Hub capacities allow me to refine and focus my goals, and I appreciate the opportunity to be clear with myself and my students about where we are headed over the course of our time together.”

Students and the Hub

Of course, the real indicator of success is what students have to say about the Hub. For the expected grumblings about having to take required classes, the Hub is largely designed to meet students where they are. 

Transfer student Tabitha Fortner (CAS’24) came to BU after spending a year at Bentley University. She was able to meet all of her Hub requirements through the courses required for her psychology major and economics minor.

As a transfer, “BU made it easy for me to fulfill my requirements, 100 percent,” Fortner says. “Psychology is just enough hard science and econ is just enough math—I didn’t have to take anything outside of my major or minor to cover all of the Hub units.”

Students do sometimes have to go out of their way to meet requirements. In that case, the hope is that they at least get something valuable from a course.

As a senior, recent grad Bernice Li (Questrom’24) says, she tried and failed to get into The Mind, Brain, and Self, a Hub course she’d wanted to take since freshman year. “There’s often only one section available for some of the more popular Hub courses,” Li says. Instead, she ended up signing up for Introduction to Communication Writing. 

The College of Communication course wasn’t exactly on the business administration major’s radar, but Li says she walked away from it with a tangible skill that should be an asset in the job market. “It definitely helped me improve my technical writing skills,” she says. 

In that vein, the Hub can give students a chance to explore disciplines that they may not otherwise experience.

Alum Rebeckah Muratore (Sargent’22, SPH’22) came to BU on a premed track. Then she signed up for the Hub’s Cross-College Challenge pilot. 

“The experience completely changed my career trajectory,” Muratore says. 

The course charged students with analyzing the proposed merger of the Beth Israel Deaconess and Lahey Health hospital systems. Not only did the class push Muratore to think independently, she says, but it marked her first hands-on exposure to health policy.

“The class introduced me to the importance and excitement of analyzing real-time health policy,” she says. And winning the course’s challenge with her team “gave me the confidence to switch majors and apply to a master’s of public health program to continue that kind of work.”

Now? Muratore has her master’s and works as a health policy analyst at a Bay Area–based data analytics company. 

General education, in general

Sure, keeping track of almost 2,000 courses can be a monumental task. As can making sure students check all of their Hub boxes before they graduate.

But both Carballo and O’Brien Hallstein swear by the importance of general education at BU. 

First and foremost, they hope that the Hub’s breadth helps prepare students for today’s job market.

“We know that not everyone is going to be working in their major after they graduate,” O’Brien Hallstein says. “Folks need to be nimble and ready to change. That’s one of the real strengths of the program—the way that general education prepares students for what we know happens after Commencement.”

But more than anything, Carballo and O’Brien Hallstein say, they hope the Hub creates a generation of lifelong learners. 

“We’re really trying to inculcate in students an engagement in the world,” Carballo says. “If you can find the world interesting, and always find things out there that you want to engage with, life will never be boring. That sort of lifelong learning is a real ethos of the program.

“One way of doing that is not to teach at students, but to make transparent to them the goals for a course, and how they’re going to get there. Showing students those connections, we hope, will keep them interested in the world for the rest of their lives.”

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Alene Bouranova is a Pacific Northwest native and a BU alum (COM’16). After earning a BS in journalism, she spent four years at Boston magazine writing, copyediting, and managing production for all publications. These days, she covers campus happenings, current events, and more for BU Today . Fun fact: she’s still using her Terrier card from 2013. When she’s not writing about campus, she’s trying to lose her Terrier card so BU will give her a new one. She lives in Cambridge with her plants. Profile

Alene Bouranova can be reached at [email protected]

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