Heart of a Dog

“Ooow-ow-ooow-owow! Oh, look at me, I’m dying.”

The opening line of The Heart of a Dog is an onomatopoeic expression of the howl of a dying stray dog. As the subsequent first-person statement “look at me” makes clear, it is a call to garner awareness of its suffering. As the dog symbolizes the Russian people as a whole, these opening lines illustrate the suffering of the nation following years of wartime deprivation and food shortages.

“The dog gathered the last of his strength and crawled, fainting, out of the doorway onto the sidewalk. The blizzard boomed like gunfire over his head, flapping a great canvas billboard marked in huge letters: ‘Is Rejuvenation Possible?’”

The imagery here is an ironic juxtaposition of the wartime destruction and suffering with the idealistic aspirations of the new Russian Soviet regime. Bulgakov uses the simile “the blizzard doomed like gunfire” to draw a connection between the harsh weather and the war. This situation contrasts sharply with the aspirational question asked by the billboard, “Is Rejuvenation Possible?” —the question at the center of the novella’s thematic exploration of Transforming Bodies to Transform Society.

“There the brothers taught him all about insulated cable, which can be sharper than a cabman’s whip. This famous occasion may be regarded as the beginning of Sharik’s education.”

The Heart of a Dog contains elements of a Bildungsroman or a coming-of-age story that tracks the development of the central character from childhood to adulthood. The character of Sharik(ov) effectively undergoes two cycles of maturation, once as a dog and once as a human.