History Literature / TheMasterAndMargarita

* YouHaveToBelieveMe: After his first encounter with Woland, Ivan the homeless attempts to warn the authorities but he's so stressed that he can't string a coherent narrative together -- and the events he's trying to describe are so implausible to begin with -- with the result that he gets committed to a mental institution for the rest of the novel. When Ivan begs the doctors to let him go, the lead psychiatrist just calmly allows him to walk away at any time if he believes himself to be sane; however, he correctly points out that the moment Ivan goes to the police and tells his story about the encounter with Satan, that's an immediate trip back to the asylum before he even finishes the tale.

!!The Bortko 2005 TV series provides most of the above, plus this :

!!The Lokshin 2024 film provides most of the above, plus this :

!!The Lokshin 2024 film adaptation provides most of the above, plus this :

!!The Bortko TV series provides most of the above, plus this :

!!The Lokshin 2024 adaptation provides most of the above, plus this :

*** "Rimsky" may allude to [[Music/NikolaiRimskyKorsakov Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]], essentially the TropeCodifier for Russian classical music.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: For everyone but the literary critics. The Master and Margarita get reunited, [[EpilepticTrees probably]] for all eternity. Pontius gets saved from his [[PersonalizedAfterlife personal Hell] and can at last reconcile with Yeshua. And Woland realizes that RousseauWasRight and admits that even in a [[WretchedHive society he considered worthy of nothing but mockery and ridicule]], there are some souls whose plight may touch even the Devil's heart.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: For everyone but the literary critics. The Master and Margarita get reunited, [[EpilepticTrees probably]] for all eternity. Pontius gets saved from DevelopmentHell and can at last reconcile with Yeshua. And Woland realizes that RousseauWasRight and admits that even in a [[WretchedHive society he considered worthy of nothing but mockery and ridicule]], there are some souls whose plight may touch even the Devil's heart.

* DawsonCasting: In the book, Woland is described as looking "a little over forty". He was played by Oleg Basilashvili, who was about seventy at the time.

* CaliforniaDoubling: Since Moscow doesn't look much like its 1930s self nowadays, they used the generally more well-preserved St. Petersburg instead. Several panoramas were shown as noticeably edited recordings of the said era.

* TheNothingAfterDeath: Berlioz, a convinced atheist, is sentenced by Woland to be briefly revived after death, only to hear that everyone gets an afterlife they deserve. Then he's reduced to ash and is sent to oblivion with no afterlife at all - just what he believed in - while his skull is made into a drinking cup.

* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: Woland's demons appear in human form (or, in Behemoth's case, as a giant cat) to the general public. They reveal their true, completely inhuman form to Master and to Margarita as they depart together (only Korovyev has a human soul and a human form in the other world - that of a Medieval Knight executed for heresy).

* SharedMassHallucination: In the end, the authorities explain away all the supernatural events of Woland's visit as conjuring tricks and hypnotically-induced hallucinations. This includes several cases of asserting that a large group of people were induced to hallucinate the same thing together, and in the case of Likhodeyev being teleported to another city miles away, asserting that everyone who saw him the other city was likewise hypnotised somehow by a hypnotist who was in Moscow the whole time. Given how most of the demonic magic fades away over time, this works and sounds plausible enough for the Soviet people.

* DeliberatelyPainfulClothing: Margarita wears a huge metal medallion at Woland's ball (the TV series also add razor-sharp steel shoes and a spiked crown mocking the Crown of Thorns). The metal keeps cutting her skin, making every moment painful, but she never complains, because it is the sign of her as the Queen. She was promised that the ball would be harmless; [[ExactWords no one said it would be ''painless'']].

* CatsAreMean : [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. Behemoth is working for the Devil and takes the form of a cat while pulling all sorts of nasty pranks, but the epilogue makes it clear that cats in general aren't mean and it's a bad thing when people take out their fear and anger about Behemoth onto normal cats.

* TheThirties: No, not TheGreatDepression -- the Soviet thirties, when [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Stalin and his cadre of fanatics were consolidating their power]]. (Strictly speaking, the novel is ambiguous on its setting: Critics generally argue that the novel is a mashup of UsefulNotes/TheSovietTwenties (when it was begun) and the Thirties.)

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

** On that note, MASSOLIT itself. Its mission is to create ''lit''erature for the ''mass''es, but the name also suggests a ''mass o''f ''lit''erature, implying a preference for quantity over quality. More generally, it's a parody of Soviet-style acronyms, whose overuse Bulgakov found hilarious. One English edition suggests the {{Woolseyism}} "LOTSALIT" conveys the joke better since the tone of the original is LostInTranslation.[[note]]See Ellendea Proffer's gloss to the Burgin and O'Connor translation.[[/note]]

*** "Rimsky" may allude to another composer, [[Music/NikolaiRimskyKorsakov Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]].
*** [[Music/IgorStravinsky Stravinsky]] composed ''The Rite of Spring'', which notoriously disturbed the audience into a riot at its first performance. This sets up an elaborate joke with Korovyev, whose disturbing tricks cause several characters to check into Dr. Stravinsky's mental hospital. Korovyev's alias "Fagot" (Fagotto) is Russian for bassoon, the first instrument heard in the ''Rite'', where it's played in its extreme upper range. Bulgakov often describes Korovyev's voice as having a high, cracked, reedy timbre, like that of a bassoonist struggling to hit those notes.

*** [[Music/IgorStravinsky Stravinsky]] was a Russian composer known for his disturbing avant-garde style.

** Korovyev's alias "Fagot" is Russian for bassoon, which sets up a complex StealthPun with Stravinsky (see the entry for that trope). Also, "Korovyev" is a street where the story starts, see LineOfSightName.

** On that note, MASSOLIT itself. Its mission is to create ''lit''erature for the ''mass''es, but the name also suggests a ''mass o''f ''lit''erature, implying a preference for quantity over quality. More generally, it's a parody of Soviet-style acronyms, whose overuse Bulgakov found hilarious. Since some of the joke is LostInTranslation, one English edition suggests the {{Woolseyism}} "LOTSALIT" better conveys the intended tone.[[note]]See Ellendea Proffer's gloss to the Burgin and O'Connor translation.[[/note]]

* StealthPun: Korovyev's disturbing tricks cause several characters to check into Dr. Stravinsky's mental hospital. Music/IgorStravinsky composed ''The Rite of Spring'', which infamously disturbed the audience into a riot at its first performance. Korovyev's alias "Fagot" (Fagotto) is Russian for bassoon, the first instrument heard in the ''Rite'', where it's played in its extreme upper range. Bulgakov often describes Korovyev's voice as having a high, cracked, reedy timbre, like that of a bassoonist struggling to hit those notes.

** [[Music/HectorBerlioz Berlioz]] composed the opera ''The Damnation of Faust''.

** Korovyev's disturbing tricks cause several characters to check into Dr. Stravinsky's mental hospital. Music/IgorStravinsky composed ''The Rite of Spring'', whose avant-garde style similarly disturbed early audiences, leading to a riot at its first performance. Also, Korovyev's alias "Fagot" (Fagotto) is Russian for bassoon. ''The Rite of Spring'' opens with a famous bassoon solo in what was then considered an unusually high register, and Bulgakov often describes Korovyev's voice as having a high, cracked, reedy timbre, like that of a bassoonist struggling to hit those notes.
** Also, "Korovyev" is a street where the story starts, see LineOfSightName.

** [[Music/IgorStravinsky Stravinsky]] was a Russian composer; see the explanation for "Fagot" above. "Rimsky" may allude to another composer, [[Music/NikolaiRimskyKorsakov Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]].

** Panayev and Skabichevsky, the aliases adopted by Korovyov and Behemoth when they appear at Griboyedov House, were 19th-century writers. Bulgakov may have intended the reference as a subtle TakeThat since one critical edition describes both writers as "very second-rate," much like the members of MASSOLIT.[[note]]See Ellendea Proffer's gloss to the Burgin and O'Connor translation.[[/note]]

* PunnyName: MASSOLIT, as in ''mass o''f ''lit''erature, implying a preference for quantity over quality. More generally, it's a parody of what Bulgakov considered absurd Soviet acronyms. One English edition suggests the {{Woolseyism}} "LOTSALIT" might convey the joke better.[[note]]See Ellendea Proffer's gloss to the Burgin and O'Connor translation.[[/note]]

** Korovyev's disturbing tricks cause several characters to check into Dr. Stravinsky's mental hospital. Music/IgorStravinsky composed ''The Rite of Spring'', which caused a riot at its first performance because the audience didn't understand its avant-garde style. Also, Korovyev's alias "Fagot" (Fagotto) is Russian for bassoon. ''The Rite of Spring'' opens with a famous bassoon solo in what was then considered an unusually high register, and Bulgakov often describes Korovyev's voice as having a high, cracked, reedy timbre, like that of a bassoonist struggling to hit those high notes.

** Korovyev's alias "Fagot" (Fagotto) is Russian for bassoon. This may imply a further connection to the character Dr. Stravinsky, whose name is another musical reference. Music/IgorStravinsky's ballet ''The Rite of Spring'' opens with a famously difficult bassoon solo in the instrument's extreme upper register. Bulgakov often describes his character's voice as having a high, cracked, reedy timbre, like that of a bassoonist struggling to hit those high notes. In the novel, Korovyev/Fagot's actions cause several characters to check into the doctor's mental hospital.

* OffingTheOffspring: One of the guests at Woland's ball (housing most famous and evil sinners from the ages past) is Freida, a woman who stuffed a handkerchief in her newborn's mouth to muffle the cries and abandoned it in the forest, and is now haunted by that handkerchief in Hell. Upon hearing Freida's story, Margarita asks why was the father judged free of guilt by the heavens; Behemoth just shrugs and replies that the man definitely did not take part in the murder itself, even if he was the reason she got pregnant in the first place. Margarita, seeing how desperate Freida has become to end her torment, even requests her forgiveness from Woland, surprising the latter quite a bit.

* NicenessDenial: When [[{{Satan}} Woland]] tells Margarita that he will fulfill her only wish, she asks for Frieda - a woman who is tormented in hell by memories of how she killed her new-born child. Woland is disgusted by Margarita's mercy, but she quickly denies it.
---> ‘No,’ Margarita replied emphatically, ‘I know that one can only speak frankly with you, and so I will tell you frankly: I am a light-minded person. I asked you for Frieda only because I was careless enough to give her firm hope. She’s waiting, Messire, she believes in my power. And if she’s left disappointed, I’ll be in a terrible position. I’ll have no peace in my life. There’s no help for it, it just happened.’

* DarkChick: Hella, the one female member of Woland's retinue, is definitely a vampire and probably also a witch.