{"id":1008,"date":"2020-04-17T04:02:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T04:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2020-04-17T15:23:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T15:23:03","slug":"emasculation-in-heart-of-a-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/nkhumalo\/emasculation-in-heart-of-a-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"Emasculation in Heart of A Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>Heart of A Dog<\/span><\/i> has been sitting on my bookshelf since January. Honestly, til I had to move out last month, I\u2019m sure it had been collecting a modest amount of dust. Little did I know, I had been ignoring one of the most provocative, hilarious, and creative books I have ever read. The overall plot is reminiscent of Gogol\u2019s The Nose: personification of a non-human character and his adventures with his newfound humanity. I\u2019m not sure if I can go so far as to say that this story is another example of magical realism, but this satire definitely contains elements of the absurd and the bizarre.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Undergarments, specifically women’s panties, were a recurring symbol in this novel. Bulgakov uses underwear to demonstrate women as the recipients of violent masculinity and emasculate men. Sharik comments on a woman\u2019s underwear: \u201c… her panties give no warmth, a bit of lacy fluff. For her lover\u2019s sake. Let her just try and put on flannel panties, and he\u2019ll yell!\u201d (Bulgakov 4) The line \u2018bit of lacy fluff\u2019 depicts just how little worth the pretty underwear actually possess. They do not even protect against the bitter cold. Just as the dog whose fur is burned off she is left to the mercy of the rough Moscow wind. \u2018Lover\u2019s sake\u2019 reveals the reliance that she has on the man in her life for support. It also adds a bit of irony to the story. How much could Vlas possibly love her if he would be aggressive with her for leaving the precious panties behind for some warm clothes. When the man who came in for a surgery to increase his sexual potency removes his pants, he reveals \u201c a pair of the most unique underpants. They were cream colored, embroidered with black cats, and they smelled of perfume\u201d (19).\u00a0 The phrase \u2018cream colored\u2019 suggests that the underwear are characterized by a frail feminine air. The decorative touch of \u2018black cats\u2019 adds an innocent or prepubescent flair to the man. Only small children have images on their underwear. Since he was previously lacking in the sex department, the man is not only being reduced to a feminine identity, but he is also given a childish demeanor. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

disturbing image of Sharik<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Heart of A Dog has been sitting on my bookshelf since January. Honestly, til I had to move out last month, I\u2019m sure it had been collecting a modest amount of dust. Little did I know, I had been ignoring one of the most provocative, hilarious, and creative books I have ever read. The overall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1023,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","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\/1008","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\/1023"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}