The Master and Margarita

by

Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita: Setting 1 key example

Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:

Woland and his accomplices never sit still, and neither does The Master and Margarita. The novel ranges wide and far in its selection of scenery, taking the reader from 1940s Moscow to biblical Jerusalem (named Yerushalayim in Aramaic) and multiple fantastical worlds in between. Woland and his crew enter a 20th-century Soviet world as they meddle with theater directors and lead poets down familiar landmarks such as Arbat Square and Patriarch’s Ponds. They set up shop in apartment Number 50 and work mischief upon the locals, their exploits offering a glimpse of Moscow’s “brightly lit thoroughfares” and “dark alleys.”

Bulgakov makes an equally evocative treatment of Yerushalayim as Pontius Pilate agonizes over Ha-Nozri’s sentence. The novel vividly renders the city’s gritty, cypress-filled streets in its account of the migraine-stricken Procurator. Its reimagining of Ha-Nozri’s trial and crucifixion sweeps the reader across millennia to a place that seems no less distant than Moscow.

In the course of bridging past and present, The Master and Margarita arrives at moments of timelessness. Woland’s shadowy, night-filled realm is a space of illogical fantasy marked by burbling riverbanks, singing mermaids, and jeweled indoor pools. As the Master and Margarita follow Azazello’s lead, they enter a craggy, limbo-like space illuminated only by the moon and ultimately settle down in a “mossy” park somewhere between Heaven and Hell. Woland leads the novel to a place where time and reality end. In switching from the everyday to the supernatural, Bulgakov’s novel puts on display the preciously thin line between the ordinary and extraordinary.