The Heart of a Dog is quite a bold satire, especially when reading between the lines and focusing the story’s ridicule of Bolshevism. The transformation of a mangy stray to the “ideal” Soviet man back to a mangy dog is in itself a hot take that, not surprisingly, was not even allowed to be published. The emphasis on the unreal and out-of-the-ordinary to highlight the absurdities and flaws of the society that Bulgakov lived in is striking. The concept of poking fun (fun might be too simple of a word, but attacking feels a bit too strong) at the government’s regime using such normalized terms is quite powerful.
\nOne especially striking thing is Bulgakov’s choice of character names. The doctor’s name is a prime example of names implying more than expected. After doing a bit of background research on the book, it turns out that Dr. Preobrazhensky’s name derives from the Russian word meaning “of transfiguration.” This name choice seemed especially ironic, as he is the one to transform Sharik the dog to Sharikov the man. Choosing to give Dr. Preobrazhensky this name is a simplistic way to add a bit of satire, which unfortunately is lost on those who do not understand Russian. Another bold choice when it comes to names is the one Dr. Preobrazhensky gives Sharik once the dog transforms into a man. Sharik gets the name Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov. The name Poligraf Poligrafovich is modeled after the tradition of double names in Russian culture, especially prominent in the Soviet Union. However, Bulgakov satirized this tradition by using this name, as both the first and middle names are so similar it would be like naming a character John Johnson in an English satire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Heart of a Dog is quite a bold satire, especially when reading between the lines and focusing the story’s ridicule of Bolshevism. The transformation of a mangy stray to the “ideal” Soviet man back to a mangy dog is in itself a hot take that, not surprisingly, was not even allowed to be published. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-10-building-the-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1019"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}