18-21 (Spanish Boot)

We finally get to meet Margarita! According to the narrator, she is beautiful, intelligent, and a wife of a prominent specialist who has made a huge contribution to the country (which is unknown to the readers). Her house occupies an entire floor and is surrounded by gardens. Nevertheless, she is not happy for a moment! Interestingly, Bulgakov says, "Gods, gods! What did this woman need?" If you reverse the order of the two sentences, it could mean she needs God. That is an extrapolation, but could work. The readers get to hear her version of the love story, and it is pretty much the same as the Master's. She loved him very much and never forgot him ever since he disappeared.

Margarita's relation to the moon and the sun greatly intrigued me. When she goes outside, she "squinted at the bright sun" and gives a "dark look" to a man who sits next to her. It is obvious that she becomes an evil witch in the following chapters, but these suggest there was evilness within her from the beginning. Then, the huge Faust moment appears. Watching the strange funeral march, she wonders, "Really, I would pawn my soul to the devil to find out whether he is alive or dead." (He probably refers to the Master) Right after she says that, Azazello appears and tells her that he is alive. At that moment, the Faustian deal is made and her soul is sold! The next short chapter depicts her transformation into a witch. The cream makes her look younger and "[feel] free, free of everything." What is she free from? I speculate that she is free from the shackles that tied her to her life and the house. That explains her mad behaviors in the next chapter. The evil imagery occurs very frequently from this point: "The moonlight licked her right side", "she floated through an open window into a dark room lit only by a silver strip of moonlight" or "the destruction she was wreaking gave her burning pleasure." It surprised me how much the cream changed her. Before, she seemed like such an adorable girl in love, but now, she is just a monster. The end of Chapter 21 is crazy. Margarita dives into a stream where moonlight shines above, which draws a parallel to the scene where Homeless dives into a pond. Then, we see animals, naked witches and all these weird things greeting "the queen". But I've gotten used to these unexplainable things in this novel. No big surprise.
-Spanish Boot