Reflective Statement for the Master and Margarita

Lucia Fabre
Mrs. Blanchard
IB English III 5
19 April 2013
The Master and Margarita: IO Reflective Statement
How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral? During the discussion, many different ideas were brought to the table about The Master and Margarita. My eyes were opened on some specific hidden meanings and reasons for why things happened in the book. There were events in the book that didn’t have the direct reason or didn’t make sense to me, but the interactive oral helped me understand it better. Throughout the book, Behemoth’s character was presented in various moments, but I never understood why exactly the author used a cat for Behemoth’s character and not another animal instead. Some ideas were brought to the discussion which allowed me to think more openly and allowed me to have an idea of why it was a cat and not another animal. In the time period in which this work was written was a time where people were very superstitious. A black cat usually symbolized bad luck, or bad events taking place for whoever’s path the cat crossed. Every time Behemoth would be present, a death or something bad would occur. Not only this, but Behemoth was also Satan’s accomplice, so it would only make sense that bad luck and bad events should take place with Satan’s crew as well. This made me think that Behemoth had to be in fact a black cat to show some superstition that was demonstrated throughout the people from the time period which this work was written in. Another event that took place in the novel that didn’t make sense to me was why did the author only portray an evil figure throughout the novel and didn’t really present a Godly figure in it? Throughout the interactive oral, many ideas were presented to try to explain this and these ideas helped lead me to a path which allowed me to answer that question. Thanks to the interactive oral, I gained insight and thought that this was a direct connection to the author’s time period. Since the author was probably not OK with everything the government was doing in his time period, he was trying to show the evil in the government. By always having an evil being present, and never really having a good figure to contradict all of the evil, he was trying to show that their government in that time period had nothing good about it. If the author would’ve used a good figure in the novel, then it would’ve shown that there was some good in the government, when in his thoughts, there really wasn’t.