44 pages • 1-hour read
Heart of a Dog
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Chapter 8-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, and animal cruelty.
Chapter 8 Summary
The next morning, Sharikov cannot be found. Bormenthal goes to the House Committee to look for him, but the House Committee says they do not know Sharikov’s location. They report he stole seven rubles intended for the purchase of textbooks. A few hours later, Sharikov returns to the apartment, smelling of cat. He tells Philipovich and Bormenthal that he has gotten a job in animal control, killing cats. Philipovich makes Sharikov apologize to Darya and Zina for his behavior the night before, which Sharikov reluctantly does.
Two days later, a girl appears at the apartment with Sharikov. Sharikov tells Philipovich the girl is his fiancée. The professor objects, and he tells the girl the truth about Sharikov’s origins and gives her three 10 ruble notes. He makes Sharikov give back the girl’s emerald ring that he’s taken as a memento. The atmosphere in the apartment grows increasingly tense. Two days later, Philipovich receives a note from the Housing Committee that Sharikov has denounced him as a “Menshevik”—a member of the moderate, socialist faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party defeated by the Bolsheviks and banned in 1921. Philipovich is “hunched” with “despair.”
Chapter 9 Summary
When Sharikov returns from work, the professor tells Sharikov to leave. Sharikov refuses and then points a revolver at Bormenthal. There is a struggle. Bormenthal sedates Sharikov. The doctor puts a note on the door informing the patients that the professor will not be available to see patients. They send Zina and Darya to their rooms. The professor and the doctor work in silence through the night.
Epilogue Summary
Ten days later, the police arrive at the apartment, accompanied by Shvonder and the doorman. Philipovich’s appearance has improved markedly. The policeman says he is there to arrest Bormenthal, Philipovich, Darya, and Zina for Sharikov’s murder. Philipovich explains that Sharik is his dog, not a man, and he is still alive. Bormenthal fetches Sharik and shows him to the police. Sharik is once again walking on all fours and has a patchy fur coat. Philipovich explains that Sharik can still talk a little bit. One of the police officers faints at the sight.
That March night, Sharik sleeps on the carpet. He is in a little bit of pain from the operation, but otherwise “warm, comfortable thoughts flowed” through his mind (145). In the first-person, Sharik wonders about his pedigree. He sees Bormenthal going through the cabinets and “the gray-haired magician” (146) Philipovich fishing a piece of brain out of a jar while he softly sings to himself.
Chapter 8-Epilogue Analysis
In the final chapters of the novella, Bulgakov abruptly discontinues the Bildungsroman arc, emphasizing his satirical critique of Soviet policies and The Destructive Consequences of Governmental Corruption. This truncated character arc reinforces the symbolic importance of Sharik(ov) as representative of the Soviet Russian project of creating a New Man. Over the course of the novella, Sharikov progresses from infancy to adolescence to young adulthood. In Chapter 8, Sharikov demonstrates his maturity by getting a job and getting engaged. In principle, Philipovich should be proud of his progeny for accomplishing these milestones. Instead, Philipovich is disgusted and dismayed. Upon learning about Sharikov’s job in animal control, he “[leans] against the doorpost with a miserable look” (132). When Sharikov brings home a girl to marry, Philipovich reveals to her that Sharikov was once a dog and sends her on her way. He then resolves to reverse the operation and transform Sharikov back into a dog because Sharikov is not an elevated “New Man” but rather an ordinary, even brutish, working-class human with ordinary impulses.
Philipovich’s engagement with his creation diverges from the model of Dr. Frankenstein to emphasize Philipovich’s disavowal of progress when it infringes on his own privilege, reinforcing the novella’s thematic exploration of Class Conflict in Domestic Spaces. After creating the Monster, Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, and the Monster is forced to continue his education on his own. In contrast, Philipovich continues to house Sharikov, albeit reluctantly, and makes some cursory efforts to “civilize” him. Unlike Dr. Frankenstein, Philipovich reverses the operation and returns Sharikov to his original state as a dog when his experiment threatens his own power and control. However, he does not see his “failure” with Sharikov as instructive in contrast with the way that Dr. Frankenstein is wracked with guilt for his scientific hubris. In the final lines of the novella, Sharik sees Philipovich “plung[ing] his slippery, rubber-gloved hands into a jar to fish out a brain; then relentlessly, persistently, the great man pursued his search” (146). This image implies that far from being deterred from his mission, Philipovich intends to continue with his experimentation to create a New Man, highlighting the turbulence of reform and evoking the famous Leninist framework of “one step forward, two steps back,” a dialectical analysis of progress wherein progress is not linear but rather a series of movements forward and backward. For Philipovich, the Sharik(ov) experiment represents a step forward, which then had to take a step back through reversal before continuing forward again.
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