Saturday, July 9, 2016

Explain and analyze a theme in Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Heart of a Dog is a story that was written by Mikhail Bulgakov. Near the beginning, the setting of the novel is in Moscow in the 1920s. The story is about an injured, stray dog who is adopted by a successful doctor named Filip Filippovich. He gives the dog the name of Sharik. He operates on the dog, giving it human organs, including testicles and a pituitary gland. He also feeds and cares for the dog. The story personifies the dog to make the dog seem like a human being. The dog has personal qualities and talks to people, so the story is quite bizarre and imaginative.
The dog eventually acts like a communist. Thus the doctor transforms Sharik back into a dog because Filip is resistant to the communism that is rampant throughout Russia, and he cannot deal with the dog's support for it. The story's events are an attack on the communism and Bolshevism of that period of time in Russia. The story attempts to show that communism and Bolshevism turns good people into bad actors.
In doing so, the novel displays the effects of uncontrolled and reckless scientific experimentation. After the operation on Sharik, who later becomes a primitive human in the story, Filip realizes that he has transformed the dog into a vile human who supports the worst features of the Bolshevik Revolution: excesses, violence, and narcissism. Thus the author writes in a conservative fashion to underscore his condemnation of the inequalities and injustices under the Communist Party.
He also writes to criticize the destruction of morally good values in Russia, which he views as the ability to persevere and kindness toward other people. These themes of horrible scientific experimentation, anti-communism, and resistance to the Revolution are plainly apparent throughout the novel.

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