Heart Of A Dog Analysis

Heart of a Dog: A Change of System, Not of WaysMikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog is a scathing criticism of the Bolsheviks and the state which they created. Bulgakov's characters in the house in Moscow are a microcosm of the society in 1926 Russian cities. What happens in the house is a representation of what has happened since the revolution and what is happening in 1926 Russia. The characters represent different sections of a society which is supposed to be without classes, but still has some of the old elite intelligentsia, Professor Philip Philippovich and Dr. Bormenthal, a new class of elite, Shvonder and the members of the house committee, and the same old dog of society, the peasants and workers. Sharik, later known as Sharikov,
Although Sharik constantly thinks, I m off to paradise. Brothers, murderers, why are you doing this to me? (15, Bulgakov) whenever the professor and doctor start to do something to him, he does not leave because he needs the professor to survive. Professor Philippovich leads the unwitting dog down a road towards a path which the professor believes should help his theories on how to make dogs, the peasantry, be able to help themselves and heal faster. Before the experiment even takes place, Sharik expresses his discontent with his confinement and lack of self control through little uprisings throughout the apartment. He destroys the watchful owl among other things in the apartment. The professor is reluctant to punish Sharik, because he feels the only way to truly change such a state of existence is not through threats and suppression, but through positive reinforcement to build up trust and education, i.e. by way of rubbing Sharik s nose in the mess which he created. It is the very trust which the doctor is trying to foster that the professor betrays with his own hubris. Professor Philippovich s loyal assistant Dr. Bormenthal
The professor believes everything can be controlled with monetary power. The professor and the doctor use Sharik to fulfill their own wishes of greatness. They wants to make Sharik better, to permanently altar his state of being without his consent and without knowing his history or that of the to be implanted brain. In doing so, the professor and doctor know that Sharik will die, but they see this as a simple inconvenience of their experiment which will give them greater insight to how the brain works. In other words, the intelligentsia could live with the deaths of peasants if that is the price of revolution. Their plan to kill Sharik does not work, and instead they have a patient on their hands which they understand even less. As a dog, Sharik was a peasant that was unable to audibly make his wishes and requests, so the professor and doctor did not worry about his consciousness. But now, Sharikov is able to and is more than willing to express himself in the only manners he knows, which are crude and unpleasant to a gentleman such as the professor. The professor and doctor once again prove how little they understand of the peasantry when they assume that dogs read backwards due to the nature of the dog s optical nerves. Sharikov spoke fish store backwards because someone was standing in front of the first part of the expression when he was learning to read the words, not because of some optical nerve. The professor