10-12 (Cracked Wristwatch)

One of things I struggled to understand in these chapters was whether or not Styopa is actually in Yalta.  In other words, is it all in his mind, or did Woland literally transport him there?  In chapter 10 Varenukha and Rimsky hear a voice in Likhodeyev’s apartments “singing ‘Cliffs are my refuge...’” (Page 120).  The last time we see Styopa (in the end of chapter 7) he is on a jetty near a mountainside (presumably in Yalta).  The fact that someone in his apartment is singing about cliffs suggests that such a person could very well be insane, and since Styopa has quite probably gone insane, I think there is a fair chance that he is the person singing.  This would suggest that he is not physically in Yalta (as he is in his apartment), but rather it his (mad) mind singing about Yalta and its cliffs.  Yet later on, this seems to be contradicted.  Woland says repeatedly that Styopa has gone to Yalta, and though Rimsky and Varenukha demonstrate that by normal transportation Styopa could never be in Yalta, Woland has also demonstrated that the “normal” rules of the world don’t apply to him in the same way.  I think he makes it quite clear in his performance of black magic (in which he makes money rain from the sky and beheads a man just to bring him back to life again) that he is capable of doing “magical” things.  Thus, it is not impossible that he defied reason and somehow transported Styopa to Yalta.  Every thing else Woland has said or predicted has come true in some way, so there is reason to trust that when he says Styopa is in Yalta, Styopa is truly in Yalta.  Right now, I can see both points of view, and hopefully we will get further clarification on this later.

I also noticed more on the idea Ms. Larson mentioned in class of the truth driving these people mad.  For instance, as soon as Varenukha tries to understand the madness going on around him (with the mysterious absence of Styopa) he himself goes mad.  Similarly, I think it is safe to say that Homeless has officially gone mad with the development of his “new” and “old” personalities.  This split in his personality comes directly after he is trying to articulate in a letter the insanity going on around him.  In the narrators words, “the more he labored, the more confused and incomprehensible the poet’s statement became,” until he eventually just gives up writing the letter (page 130).  Everyone around Homeless thinks he is insane because of what he claims to have seen, but in reality, Homeless is insane because the truth he has experienced is itself insane.  As Ms. Larson said, the truth drives him to insanity.
-Cracked Wristwatch