57 pages • 1 hour read
Mikhail BulgakovThe Master and Margarita
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Moon
In the novel, the moon is a symbol of the space between two worlds. Whenever characters make important choices, whenever they experience a life changing event, and whenever they are made to ruminate on the important events in their lives, they stand beneath the moon. The moon is a light in a dark sky, a bright pale object amid the darkness. It contains the various dichotomies explored in the novel symbolizing change, choice, and progression from one place or state of mind to another. When Woland arrives in Moscow, he does so with a plan to assess and change the city. His profound influence on the lives of the people he encounters means that many of his interactions take place beneath the moon, symbolizing the change from the old to the new and the strange place between two worlds Woland and his retinue occupy.
Faced with such profoundly life changing events and choices, the characters come to view the moon as a symbol of everything they do not know. The novel was written when the moon was still a distant and unexplored celestial body. Occupying a place in the night sky, the moon represented a place beyond human comprehension. The narrative of The Master and Margarita covers two thousand years, but the moon remains unchanged and constantly distant throughout this period. Pilate, after meeting Yeshua, comes to realize that there is more to the man than he will ever understand. He is tortured beneath the moonlight and unable to sleep. Margarita also confronts the depths of her unknowing while under the moonlight as she flies over Moscow and experiences the city from a new perspective that she knows will not last forever. The moon may represent choices and changes in the characters’ lives, but its permanence reminds them of exactly how little they truly understand about the world.
By the end of the novel, the moon has become a symbol of tortured acceptance. The Master and Margarita are shown Pilate, who has been sitting and staring at the same moon for nearly two thousand years. He has been tortured by his unknowing and forced to deliberate the choices he made throughout his life. When he is freed from this prison, he walks toward the moon with Yeshua. He is led toward the symbol of his understanding and the symbol of his imprisonment, which unites him with the unknowable future that has occupied his thoughts for so long. For Pilate, at least, the moon becomes a symbol of resolution and acceptance.
Buildings
Buildings are symbols of the institutions that are contained within them. In Moscow, the bureaucracies that are ridiculed and satirized by the novel are contained within their own building. A place like MASSOLIT is filled with self-important, pompous writers, who deliberately separate themselves from the people they are supposed to be describing in their novels, so much so that their luxurious officers and famous restaurants only serve to cloister and insulate them from the real world. Similarly, the Variety Theater is a symbol of the hollowed out bureaucracy of the art world in Moscow. The building is a holding place for other people’s money, serving to enrich the directors rather than to perform any kind of communal artistic function. In these examples, the buildings themselves symbolize the uselessness of the people who occupy the buildings. They are drab, uninteresting, and isolationist places that mask their real intentions.
Public housing is also symbolic of the problems within the society. Once Berlioz dies, his apartment becomes a coveted place. Few people care about Berlioz as a person, but many people care about his apartment. They write to the building manager to try and secure the apartment while Berlioz’s own uncle travels to Moscow because he is more invested in securing his dead nephew’s apartment for himself than he is in attending the funeral. The apartment is taken over by Woland and his retinue, who bribe the building manager to make sure they are not troubled. The bribe quickly backfires, and the man is arrested, but so many people have tried to secure the apartment that his actions and attitudes with regards to the building are endemic to the society as a whole. The fierce fight over who gets the building symbolizes the deeply cynical nature of the society.
By the end of the novel, buildings become a symbol of peace. Woland and his people burn down the apartment and the corrupt institutions, removing their temptation from the world and restoring something like order (ironically, restoring order through chaos). Furthermore, the Master and Margarita are allowed to die and spend eternity at peace. The place where they will see out eternity is a small cottage of their own. Their building is removed from the cynicism and corruption of society and provides a physical place for the novel’s two most moral characters to enjoy each other’s love for the rest of time without being tainted by the travails of modern society. The cottage functions as a symbol of how peace can be restored, but the distance (physical and metaphysical) between the cottage and every other building shows the symbolic distance society must travel to achieve its own peace.
The Spring Ball of the Full Moon
In Part 2 of The Master and Margarita, Woland throws The Spring Ball of the Full Moon. The traditional celebration is an important narrative moment in the novel because it provides a symbolic reminder of Woland’s true nature. Though he has spent most of the story thus far charming other characters and engaging in philosophical arguments, the Ball symbolizes his true nature as a manipulator and as Satan himself. Margarita is the host of the Ball. She greets the guests and is shocked by their horrific nature. Not only are many of them rotting corpses who arrive in coffins, but they are also criminals and sinners. Some of the most infamous villains from history are invited to the party, all arriving at Woland’s request. Woland’s influence over such terrible people symbolizes his true nature. For all his charm and intellectualism, he is still Satan. He may be able to charm Margarita and manipulate her into doing his bidding, but he remains the Christian embodiment of evil.
However, not all the guests are as quite as villainous as the more famous invitees. Margarita meets several women who have been sent to hell due to situations that are more morally nuanced than might be expected. One woman has given poison to other women to help them escape abusive relationships, for example, while another is blamed for the unfortunate death of her child. Both these women are tortured for eternity, but the nature of their lives compels Margarita to take pity on them. Their presence at the ball is symbolic of nuanced morality, which is explored in the novel and in which a person (like Pilate), who has been condemned as a sinner and a criminal by history, may actually prove to have been more sympathetic than expected. The varied nature of the guest list symbolizes the varied nature of morality in the real world.
