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Chapter 30
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Master and Margarita, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Courage and Cowardice
Art and Authenticity
The Ambiguity of Good and Evil
Love and Hope
The Danger and Absurdity of Soviet Society
Summary
Analysis
The storm is swept away without a trace and a rainbow appears over Moscow. The master, Margarita, and Azazello join up with Woland, Koroviev, and Behemoth, who are also sitting on black horses.
Bulgakov often uses the weather to represent transitional moments in the story. The storm and the rainbow can be read as the collaboration of good and evil—the rainbow needs the storm in order to exist.
Themes
Woland instructs the master and Margarita to bid goodbye to Moscow. The master runs to the edge of the hillside and looks at the city. He feels a mixture of emotions: a “wringing sadness” gives way to a “sweetish anxiety” and a “gypsy excitement.” For a moment, he feels “deep offence” before finally settling on an “enduring peace.”
The widening and heightening of the vantage point underscore the sense that the novel is drawing to a close. The master, just for a moment, considers going back to Moscow, perhaps to try again along the parameters of his old life. Enduring peace, though, is what he really wants.
Themes
Just for fun, Behemoth whistles, making the horses rear up and birds spring from the trees below. On a riverboat, several passengers lose their hats. Koroviev, not wanting to miss out, whistles even louder, bringing trees up by their roots and causing the riverboat to wash up on the bank.
Bulgakov is having fun here, playfully giving the reader one last demonstration of the group’s supernatural powers. It’s one final and comedic disruption of the status quo in the Moscow society below.
Themes
Woland shouts “it’s time!” as the group rides up into the evening sky. Margarita looks behind her to see that the city has disappeared—"only mist and smoke were left."
The vapors into which the city disappears shows Margarita that her hold life is gone forever.
Themes
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