When I first bought all of the books, I looked at “The Master and Margarita” and immediately dreaded reading it. Being on the thick side, I thought that the book was going to be extremely hard to get through. I am glad to be proven wrong. Although I found the first chapter of the book very interesting, it wasn’t until the second book that I got hooked. I really liked Margarita’s character and thought her presence in the second book made me enjoy it a lot more.
I loved how this book (as long as it is) is just full of different themes and ideas: good and evil, courage and cowardice, innocence and guilt, sin and redemption, the ability to bring on your own fate…. I just found that it was full of material that is going to be fun to write about in the essay.
i found it really funny/ironic how careless people were with their words especially about religion(God and the Devil), especially when the Devil is amongst them and just waiting to be provoked. when the characters, such as petrovich yells ,”The devil take me,” using the term “devil” in the form of a curse word, just like using God’s name, they die (disappear). I felt like these situations really highlighted the theme of having the ability to bring out your own fate. this theme is extremely evident especially when Margarita says “Really, I would pawn my soul to the devil to find out whether he is alive or dead.”.. Which she does. Haha.
Just like Devin, my favorite part is also the Satanic Ball. The characters that attended the party were really interesting…I don’t know why but it kind of reminded my of the parade of seven deadly sins in faustus, maybe because it was just an interesting part in the book…?
I also really loved this quote:
“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living brings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light.”
I liked this quote because I felt like it had a direct connection with the first quote that Bulgakov threw in on the first page of the book : ” I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good” -Goethe, Faust.
These quotes really outline the theme of good and evil in this book and proving that one can really not go with out the other. That evil supports the good and that good is a necessity for evil to happen. That every outcome comes with a good and evil.
Yeah… Sorry for the late upload. I had it saved in my drafts and totally forgot about finishing it up and posting it until I realized that I had my presentation tomorrow. That’s what happens with endless hours of practicing opera and musical rehearsing. Ciao.
-Joc
I really like that quote too! Next time, please give a page number so we can all go back and find it, and see where it is said and by whom, and in what context. I wanted to go back and look at this but I can’t recall exactly where it is!
The quote is really evocative for me because of the point about shadows being cast by “trees and living things,” which to me indicates that there is no pure “light” or pure goodness when we’re talking about life. No matter how much plants and other living things are thriving, there are some negative aspects to their existence, some ways in which things don’t go well. But without that you wouldn’t have life at all. Whether the bad is necessary for the good to exist, or whether it’s just that we appreciate the good more when we compare it against the bad I don’t know. But it does ring true that life as it is here on this earth doesn’t ever exist without some bad, and yet I wouldn’t trade that life for a “naked light.” Neat quote!
Yeah definitely! I found the quote page a couple days ago too because I wanted to use it for my presentation (although I changed it once I got there). My presentation was going to be about how good and evil could be a huge theme in the book and how Woland plays the “devil”, but not the typical type (as we discussed in seminar today). Woland seems to know that good triumphs evil especially when he says “everything will turn out right, the world is built on that”(382) when margarita is troubled about Pilate and that’s also where this quote could come inn . My question was going to be “is all evil really bad? What significance does the balance of good and evil have in the book and does that mean that acts of goodness have the same meaning as absence of acts of evil.” I was going to say this is In seminar today when we kind of went onto that topic…but as you can tell I get really nervous when I speak up in front of everyone haha…