There are so many details in this novel that it would be impossible for me to address them all in one post and retain my sanity. For that reason here are merely a few that have been floating around in my head with which I have made a connection to one thing or another.
When Ivan Nikolayevich hears the name Annushka he connects it to first “sunflower oil” and then “Pontius Pilate” (51). What I find interesting about the latter is that Ivan did not think of the professor who told him of Annushka’s spilling of the sunflower oil, but of a character in a story barely related to what Ivan takes as real world occurrences.
When the choirmaster and the tom cat walk off with the professor, it made me think of the Holy Trinity. We normally think of the Holy Trinity as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; but what if there is a counter Trinity for Hell? This group could actually be an Evil Trinity.
I am utterly confused as to why Ivan decides to go for the swim which effectually loses him his clothes. He claims that he knows that the professor “must be at the Moskva River” and then later at Griboyedov, but the narrator offers the reader little assistance in interpreting these random acts (56-57). Speaking of the narrator, he is really starting to bug me. He becomes intrusive and mysterious to an extent similar to the narrator of Gogol’s “The Nose.” He comments on the character’s opinions (62) and even berates the reader for his own digression (63). Obviously he cannot be trusted.
There could be a connection between the female author Pilot George and Pontius Pilate and George Sand.
It’s a bit odd that everything seems to be happening “exactly at midnight” (65).
-Golden Horseshoe
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