Meaning and summary: "Heart of a Dog" - a story out of time

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

After reading the words: “Summary, Heart of a Dog”, one can only smile sarcastically. What can be the "summary" of a classic work without time, which is projected onto the past and present of a vast country? The author, the son of a theology professor, had the unique gift of Aesopian style.

Why, it's all written about us, the current ones! Have modern adults never had to contemplate a misanthropic grin when a lawyer condemns an innocent “for an indicator”, when a teacher, crossing out the life path of talented people, takes on free education “on call”, when a doctor, noticing a skinny wallet, forgets about the Hippocratic oath? The Sharikovs turned out to be an artificially introduced, but really tenacious mutation of our people. By the way, starting to write according to the well-known copywriting template, you can only be amazed. Letask: “What can be the” summary of the story “Heart of a Dog”, if it is actually a story? Let us nevertheless set ourselves the maximum task - in a few lines to show, reveal, describe, perhaps even a slightly unexpected interpretation of Bulgakov's story.

Is it not with a break in history, namely with the October Revolution of 1917, that the very operation on the dog, carried out by an intellectual, "world luminary" Professor Preobrazhensky, is associated? If so, then Heart of a Dog is the summary of our story. A violent act, when the rebellious intellectual revolutionaries broke the natural course of the history of the Russian state by "appointing" the worst part of the working class as the hegemon. “Having nothing”, the lumpen-proletariat, chronically unable to add or multiply, but only divide and take away. It is in this environment that the Sharikovs cohort is born.

By the way, the book quite ironically shows the role of the national intelligentsia. On the one hand, Professor Preobrazhensky has an impressive intellectual baggage, correct views on the arrangement of the world. On the other hand, he earns a living only by operations, helping the old debauchees to continue to engage in debauchery with the implanted gonads of monkeys. On the third, it was he who “initiated” Sharikov with his ideas.

Bulgakov, like an artist, draws an era with a few precise strokes, its summary. The dog's heart is implanted, it has humanized and beats. Logicstory, Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov at first only potentially, at the level of reflexes, treats everything human with contempt and hatred - culture, politeness, respect. Early on, he makes a career out of testing his seething hatred for cats, gaining a job as head of the city's stray animal cleanup department to "choke them". But then he pragmatically begins to further clear his living space, his further "runway", writing a denunciation for the physical destruction of his benefactor Preobrazhensky. Finally, his real grin appears, he begins to threaten with a gun. This is the summary. "Heart of a Dog" reduces everything to a "happy ending": Dr. Bormental and Professor Preobrazhensky, having applied physical effort and performed the operation, returned Sharikov to his original state. How simple and elegant! Recall that the action of this fantastic story takes place in 1925-1926. But is this how it happened in our history? Not at all. Knowing the smell of blood, the "Sharikovs" staged a real bloody feast in the 30s … Until the 50s, objectionable people were strangled like unfortunate cats, "cleansing the cities." And what is striking is that the values expressed "from the author" by Professor Preobrazhensky never became a measure of the life of our entire society. Turn on the TV, look at the news. How often a brazen, boorish violation of the reasonable and fair still wins. Sharikov forever!

So is the expression "summary" applicable to this work? "Dog's heart" is multidimensional, itforced and makes you think about society, about the role of present culture and traditions, about the future. Let us recall the monologue of Zinovy Gerdt from the immortal film based on the novel by the Weiner brothers about the future “era of mercy”, about the importance of the current change by everyone of their soul, heart, mind in order for peace and kindness to reign there.