44 pages • 1-hour read
Heart of a Dog
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Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty.
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 is a series of case notes taken by Doctor Bormenthal on Sharik’s prognosis following the surgery, complete with ink blots and deletions. The operation takes place on December 23. The goal of the operation is to study the viability of pituitary transplant and its role in “rejuvenation.” Three days after the operation, on December 26, Sharik’s condition begins to improve. By December 28, there is “significant improvement.” On December 29, Sharik’s fur begins to fall out, and he begins barking again, but it sounds more like a “groan” than a typical bark. His appetite improves. By January 2, Sharik has grown to nearly the size of the doctor, has learned to walk on his hind legs, and is capable of speech.
Meanwhile, Philipovich’s health begins to decline. On January 6, Sharik’s tail falls off. His vocabulary continues to improve at a rapid pace. Sharik now resembles a human with hair only on his “head, chin, and chest” (70). Word begins to spread about Sharik, and crowds begin to gather outside the apartment to see him. On January 8, Philipovich decides that the operation has moved beyond “rejuvenation” and resulted in “TOTAL HUMANIZATION” (72). Sharik has taken to swearing profusely, which upsets the professor. The doctor and professor begin to dress Sharik in human clothes. On January 11, Sharik begins to use language in response to his environment rather than just at random.
Doctor Bormenthal writes that this experiment has shown that the pituitary determines “the hormones of a man’s image” (75). The doctor is thrilled that the pituitary has stimulated the dog’s brain such that Sharik can express what he must have already learned when he was a dog. Bormenthal is hopeful that Sharik can become “intellectually advanced,” but Philipovich is skeptical because the donor was a petty criminal who drank too much. On January 17, Bormenthal makes his final note. He concludes that Sharik is now a “complete human being” (78).
Chapter 5 Summary
Chapter 5 opens with a series of notes that have been left in the apartment. Two of the notes give instructions to Sharik about not eating sunflower seeds or playing musical instruments at night. Another note is from Zina, who says Sharik is with Shvonder.
The narrative continues in third-person omniscient perspective. It is an evening in late January. Philipovich is angry because Shvonder has put a note in the newspaper that suggests that Sharik is Philipovich’s “illegitimate” son. Meanwhile, Sharik plays a balalaika—a Russian stringed instrument with a triangular body. Philipovich sends Zina to fetch Sharik. When Sharik goes into the study, Philipovitch chastises him for sleeping in the kitchen, wearing outrageous clothes, and making a mess in the apartment when he smokes, spits, and urinates. In response, Sharik whines, “You sure give me a hard time, Pop” (83). Philipovich furiously tells Sharik not to call him “Pop,” demanding he use his formal name. Sharik retorts that he never asked to have the operation and calls Philipovich “comrade,” which further angers the professor.
Sharik tells Philipovich he needs identity documents, in part because the House Committee has been asking for them. Sharik tells Philipovich that the House Committee protects the interests of workers like himself. Sharik states that he wants his given name to be “Poligraph Poligraphovich,” based on the name he saw on the calendar for March 4, the day he was “born,” and his surname to be “Sharikov” (the last name form of “Sharik”). Shvonder has the professor write a statement affirming Sharik’s name and “birth.” Philipovich finds the whole thing absurd, but he complies. After they have finished, Shvonder tells Sharikov he has to register for the draft, but Sharikov refuses and says he wants an exemption on “medical grounds.” Philipovich asks if Sharikov will be moving out now that he has papers, but Sharikov declines.
After Sharikov and Shvonder leave, the professor and Doctor Bormenthal discuss how unruly and difficult Sharikov has become. They hear a crash, and a cat races into the bathroom, followed by Sharikov. The door of the bathroom closes, and they hear Sharikov threatening the cat and then the sound of running water. Suddenly, the cat bursts out of the window in the bathroom door and flees. Sharik has accidentally turned on the water, locked himself in the bathroom, and cannot get out or turn off the water. Philipovich tells Bormenthal to send the waiting patients away. Water begins to leak out of the bathroom into the apartment. Fyodor, the doorman, climbs in through the broken window, unlocks the door, and turns off the tap. When he opens the door, water gushes through the apartment. Philipovich is furious. He calls Sharik an “impudent creature.” Bormenthal calls him a “savage.” Fyodor asks Philipovich to pay for the damage caused and then advises the professor to “box” Sharikov in the ear, but Philipovich refuses.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
In Chapters 4 and 5, Bulgakov shifts away from Sharik’s point of view and focuses on Doctor Bormenthal’s perspective as Sharik(ov) begins to mature and change, using the literary device of notes. In Chapter 4, these notes are Bormenthal’s case notes recounting Sharik’s progress following his surgery, while Chapter 5 opens with a series of notes from members of the household. This use of hybrid formats, shifting from a more conventional narrative form to the hyper-realism of Bormenthal’s notes, complete with his inkblots, strike-outs, and inserted pieces of paper, and the household notes of Chapters 5, illustrates the kind of hybrid narrative reminiscent of the avant-garde movement of the 1910s and 1920s in the West and Russia. Avant-garde writers and artists created collage-like forms that reflected the fragmentation of modernity, the growing impact of technology on daily life, and other changes taking place around them. Fittingly, this hybridity appears in The Heart of a Dog at the moment when Sharik is undergoing his most profound changes.
In these chapters, Bulgakov focuses on Transforming Bodies to Transform Society, using Professor Philipovich’s household as a microcosm of Russian society in the new Soviet Republic. Over the course of 10 days, the dog transforms into a human as a result of his surgery. This has a profound impact on the society around him, which has to accommodate this New Man even as the newly formed human has to accommodate the demands of his society. This double transformation is best illustrated in the debate over names that occurs in Chapter 5. Now that he has become human, Sharik tells Philipovich, “I can’t manage without papers. After all, you know damn well that people who don’t have any papers aren’t allowed to exist nowadays” (86). Sharik’s words act as satirical commentary on the increasing demands of documentation in a modernizing nation-state, wherein a person without papers effectively does not exist for the state.
The creature’s bodily transformation necessitates a nominal transformation within the context of society. Philipovich allows the creature to name itself, and so his name transforms from the dog-like “Sharik” to the human “Sharikov.” Sharikov also chooses the first name and patronymic Poligraph Poligraphovich because it was on the calendar for his “birth” day. His chosen name is a satirical play on naming conventions in Soviet Russia. Traditionally, one was given the name of a saint and would celebrate one’s saint’s day (e.g., someone named Ephrem for Saint Ephrem would celebrate June 9). However, Soviet Russia was secular, and days were redesignated with technological or nationalist iconography, stripping them of religious significance. Bulgakov creates the fictional Poligraph Day on March 4, and Sharikov adopts it as his “saint” day. While today the polygraph is traditionally associated with crime detection, in the early 1920s, the polygraph was primarily used in scientific study of physiological characteristics, including experiments on dogs—a nod to Sharikov’s origins. The resulting name, Poligraph Poligraphovich, represents a humorous moniker created using the new secular system of the time. It also implies that Sharikov’s “father” is a scientific instrument, as Poligraphovich means roughly “son of the polygraph.”
In The Heart of the Dog, the apartment complex serves as a microcosm of the class conflicts that were roiling Russia during the period, bringing Bulgakov’s thematic interest in Class Conflict in Domestic Spaces to the fore. Within this microcosm, Professor Philipovich represents the petty bourgeoisie. He owns a small business, his medical practice, which employs members of the proletariat, his household staff. Philipovich is in a precarious position following the Russian Revolution. In keeping with the principles of the Soviet Republic, his property is to be expropriated and redistributed to the proletariat, as illustrated in his dispute with the Housing Authority in Chapter 3. However, his practice is important to the Soviet project as a scientific researcher whose insights can be used to create a Soviet New Man—a central aim of the new republic.
Within Bulgakov’s satire, Philipovich creates a New Man, Sharikov, a new member of the proletariat (wage-earning laborers) who demands a share of Philipovich’s property. This conflict threatens to spill over, as illustrated by the farcical scene when Sharikov turns on the water in the bathroom, and it gushes out into the apartment. This moment marks a turning point in Sharikov’s development as he self-identifies as a “worker” since he is “not a capitalist” (87). Sharikov’s change from Lumpenproletariat, or a member of the proletariat who lacks class consciousness, into someone with a growing, if limited, sociopolitical understanding, reinforces Philipovich’s household as a microcosm for Soviet society in the period.
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