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.
Character Analysis
Woland
Woland is the name adopted by Satan in The Master and Margarita. Woland becomes human to visit Moscow in the 1930s, whereby he evaluates the society and judges its inhabitants. Though he is the devil in disguise, Woland plays a decidedly honorable role in the novel. He is genuinely and sincerely interested in people and wants to provide help to those who ae undeservedly unhappy, such as Margarita. He punishes corruption, arrogance, and stupidity while offering opportunities to people whom society has forgotten. Through Woland, the Master and Margarita are reunited and Natasha is able to escape her unhappy life as a domestic servant. Meanwhile, Berlioz and the other arrogant members of the Muscovite high society are punished. Woland dislikes hypocrisy most of all. He rewards Margarita and the Master because they are sincere and honest. He punishes others because they claim to live in a new type of equal, fair society free of class distinctions while preserving and abusing their privileged roles in society for their own benefit. Woland’s role as Satan is to expose the hypocrisy of the human world rather than to simply torture and harm people for no reason.
In this sense, Woland plays an important role in the novel’s Faustian themes. Woland is Satan, so he tempts people by offering them deals that require them to either abandon or reaffirm their morality. Woland rewards Margarita because she does not ask for anything after a night playing hostess at his ball. When he does offer her a reward, she asks that he help an unfortunate woman rather than reunite Margarita with the Master. Margarita’s act of selflessness is the ideal foil for Woland. He appreciates her honesty and her goodness and chooses to help her because she is sincerely a moral person. Woland offers people deals that expose their immorality, such as the theater directors and audience members whose greed is quickly exposed when they are offered money or clothing. Margarita shows that she is selfless when offered a deal by Woland; the other characters show that they are selfish. Therefore, Margarita is rewarded, and the others are punished. As such, Woland occupies the role of arbiter of human society. He offers humanity the chance to demonstrate its goodness, but it is a chance only taken by a small number of people.
Part of Woland’s authority comes from his longevity. He has existed for thousands of years and has seen every iteration of human society. As he remarks to his retinue, the current iteration of Moscow claims to be different but it is, in fact, very similar to other societies that have existed in the past. Corruption, immorality, and self-interest still rule, even if the political ideology claims to be different. Woland applies his judgment to the society nonetheless. Throughout this time, however, Woland himself operates in deference to a higher power. Like many characters who hold bureaucratic or administrative positions in the novel, Woland is performing a job. As his conversations with Levi illustrate, Woland works at the behest of Yeshua, and he is subservient to him. Woland is not an all-powerful being. Rather, he is an administrator who is employed to safeguard the continued existence of humanity. He is a bureaucrat on a grand scale, evaluating society on a regular basis to ensure the good are rewarded and the sinful are punished. The absurdity of his actions and the chaos he causes, then, become a subtle satire of the nature of bureaucracy. Woland is fundamentally just part of a larger bureaucracy.
The Master
The Master is one of the two characters whose name lends the novel its title. Unlike his romantic partner Margarita, however, the Master is a tired, pessimistic figure. Whereas Margarita’s goodness and morality confirms for Woland that society is not completely irredeemable, the Master is a detached figure who spends more time looking toward the past than the future. He is first introduced to the audience when he appears at the asylum visiting Ivan using a set of keys he has stolen from an attendant. The Master’s role in the asylum is similar to his role in society. He is a detached figure who relegates himself to the sidelines, observing and documenting others out of casual interest in the human condition. His stolen keys are much like his literary talents in that they allow him to explore the hidden corners of the asylum and piece together the untold stories that surround him. When Ivan meets the Master, he does so through a small window in a locked door. Glimpses of the Master are visible, but he is a mysterious, somewhat unknowable figure. Similarly, his name lends him an inherent mystery. He does not have a normal name, only a wry allusion to his talents as a writer that have now landed him in an asylum. Margarita is open, honest, and good. The Master is withdrawn, pessimistic, and more ambiguous. The Master and Margarita may not be opposites of one another but their differences can be combined to help provide an insight into the human condition Woland wishes to explore.
The Master is the victim of a cynical plot against him. Once he meets Margarita and falls in love, he decides to pursue his life’s dream. He writes a novel about Pontius Pilate, and he believes he has produced something worthy and interesting. However, the critics and his fellow writers do not agree. They turn on the Master and ridicule him in public. Not only do they not like his work, but they go out of their way to sully his reputation and mock him openly. They are not motivated by any literary interests or any real evaluation of his work. Instead, one of the leading critics in the campaign against the Master admits he did everything in an effort to force the Master out of his apartment, so the critic could claim the Master’s apartment for himself. He is willing to destroy the Master’s wellbeing and reputation for a home. As such, the Master is one of the novel’s primary victims of the society’s self-interest, envy, and cynicism. He is a good man brought down by the negative aspects of the society he inhabits.
The Master is the embodiment of a credible artistic ideal. His book about Pontius Pilate may be widely criticized by self-interested rivals, but his work is praised by Woland and Yeshua, people with firsthand experience of the events. As such, the downfall and eventual salvation of the Master are insights into the mistreatment of art in a cynical society. In a novel that could not be published during the author’s lifetime, the plight of the Master in The Master and Margarita represents the suffering and dangers faced by artists in Stalinist Moscow.
Margarita
As a title character and one of the novel’s most sympathetic characters, Margarita occupies the role of the protagonist even if she is absent from large parts of the narrative. Her involvement with Woland and her desire to reunite with the Master drive the plot forward and allow her to demonstrate her innate goodness and be rewarded by Woland as a result.
Margarita is a complicated character. When she first meets the Master, she is in a difficult position. She is married to a rich, successful, and pleasant man. However, she does not love him. The tragedy of her situation drives her to suicidal thoughts. She does not know whether she can continue to live in a world that seems so unfulfilling and hostile to her happiness. At her nadir, she meets the Master and is able to see the potential for a better life. Margarita has an affair with him that saves her life. Her illicit relationship with the Master is less adultery than it is a salvation. By being with a person she truly loves, she is able to see the potential for goodness in the world. She abandons her suicidal thoughts, though the tragedy that surrounds her life does not dissipate. While Margarita is happy, the Master is savaged by other writers for cynical reasons. He becomes disillusioned with the world, and he takes himself away to live in an asylum. Once again, Margarita is alone. The tragedy of this situation is that, unlike previously, she was given the opportunity to experience true happiness before it was snatched away by fate and circumstance.
The unfairness and the tragedy of Margarita’s situation is what makes her final decisions so meaningful. After being approached by Woland, she agrees to host his ball. At this stage, Margarita has nothing to lose. She makes a deal with the devil because her life to this point seems indistinguishable from demonic torture. She accepts Woland’s offer, but just at the point when he offers her the chance to exercise her wish and reunite herself with the Master, she performs a selfless act. She asks Woland to forgive and save Freida instead. In effect, Margarita sacrifices herself and her happiness for a woman she hardly knows. This act of selflessness defies the self-involvement and corruption of the society shown elsewhere in the novel. Margarita is the protagonist of the novel because she shows that goodness can exist in the world, and as a reward she is given an infinity to spend with the Master. However, to achieve this she must die. Margarita passes on to the next world, sacrificing herself and her earthly body, and in doing so she shows Woland that humanity is not yet irredeemable.
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate is a historical figure whose life becomes the focus of the Master’s novel. The Master and Margarita is split between events that take place in contemporary 1930s Moscow and the events in Jerusalem at the time of the execution of Jesus Christ, as overseen by the procurator of Judea, Pilate. As such, Pilate’s character occupies a unique position in the novel. He is presented, portrayed, and judged by people who either did not know him or who do not care that he existed as well as by people who were presented during his lifetime but may not be reliable. The character of Pontius Pilate is a composite of different perspectives and sources. Parts of his story are told by the Master, who is writing thousands of years after the event in an atheistic society. Other parts are told by Woland, who may not be a reliable narrator since he is Satan. The final parts of Pilate’s story are experienced by the Master and Margarita after their deaths and before their transcending to another world. The character of Pilate emerges from these sources, creating an amalgamation of different sympathies and perspectives, many of which have an agenda or intention. Unlike the characters whose stories are told from an objective third person perspective, the presentation of Pilate is very subjective.
Nevertheless, Pilate emerges as a sympathetic figure and the victim of history. Pilate is famous as the man who oversaw the execution of Jesus Christ (Yeshua Ha-Notsri in the novel). As such, he is condemned by history and only curious men like the Master are interested in rehabilitating his reputation. As explained by Woland, Pilate is a conflicted figure. He dislikes Jerusalem and the people under his authority. He dislikes the petty bickering and power brokerage among the city’s religious factions. He is intrigued by Yeshua and tries to have the order for his execution stayed, but he cannot fight back against the city’s complicated bureaucracy. Following Yeshua’s execution, Pilate is laden with regrets. He cannot sleep, and he can only stare at the moon and feel the weight of history pressing down on him. Pilate is judged by history as the man who killed Jesus Christ while in the novel’s version of reality his role was more nuanced and sympathetic. Pilate’s role in the novel is to illustrate the subjective nature of history.
