Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky and Sharik

Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky and Sharik are joined first by an act of rescue, then by an experiment that remakes the dog’s identity, and finally by a return to canine life. Their relationship carries the story’s central ambiguity: the professor is both Sharik’s benefactor and the agent of a transformation whose human result becomes dangerous, while Sharik’s restored life beside him suggests a quieter form of attachment than the experiment could produce.

Rescue and Naming

The bond begins when the professor offers food to a hungry dog and calls him Sharik. The name is given casually, but the dog accepts it in the same moment that he accepts the sausage: the professor has answered an immediate need, and Sharik’s gratitude is absolute. The first relation between them is therefore unequal but intimate, built on dependence, recognition, and care.

The professor’s rescue becomes the beginning of a larger intervention. A case record identifies the subject as a roughly two-year-old male mongrel named Sharik, placing the dog’s ordinary identity inside the professor’s scientific documentation. What had begun as an encounter between a man and a hungry animal is recast as an experiment, with Sharik both the recipient of the professor’s attention and its object.

Experiment and Human Identity

The operation transforms the relationship as thoroughly as it transforms Sharik. Once human, he is asked what name he will use and answers with the name later given in full as Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov. The shift from Sharik to Sharikov marks more than a change in form: it gives the transformed subject a human and administrative identity, one that the professor does not simply control.

That identity becomes a point of conflict over who has the authority to define Sharikov. When Shvonder asks the professor to certify the new man’s name and supposed place of birth, the professor rejects the proposed account that he was born in the flat. The scene exposes the gap between biological creation and social recognition: the professor can explain the transformation, but official documents and political allies can also claim the power to name and classify its result.

The professor’s scientific account does not resolve the moral or practical problem of their relationship. In the case notes, Bormenthal concludes that the experiment has produced a new organism to be studied as such. The language of observation places distance between the researchers and their subject, even as the professor remains personally implicated in Sharikov’s creation.

Conflict and Reversal

Sharikov later uses his official position to accuse the professor and Bormenthal of counter-revolutionary speech and other misconduct, while also alleging that the professor ordered Zina to burn a book. The report, countersigned by Shvonder, turns the professor’s creation against him through the very channels of public identity and political authority that had helped establish Sharikov’s new standing.

The conflict reaches a stark reversal when officials arrive to investigate the alleged murder of Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov. The professor answers the accusation by treating Sharikov as the dog on whom he operated. His response collapses the official human identity back into the history of the experiment: the person named in the charge is, in the professor’s account, his former dog. The relationship has moved from rescue, through attempted creation, to a struggle over whether Sharikov is to be understood as a man or as the animal who preceded him.

Canine Return and Continuing Care

At the close, Sharik is once again beside the professor in the apartment. He lies on the carpet near the leather couch and thinks of himself as fortunate and settled there. The scar on his head remains a trace of what was done, but the pain is easing; his reflections turn instead to the warmth and security of his present home. His calm contentment contrasts with the turmoil associated with his human existence.

The professor, meanwhile, sits nearby humming as Bormenthal tidies the consulting room. Sharik sees the professor at work with a brain in a jar, and the image recalls the scientific intervention that altered his life. The closing scene thus does not erase the experiment: it places the dog’s restored domestic comfort beside the professor’s continuing medical practice. Their bond survives, but now rests on Sharik’s dependence and the professor’s care rather than on the failed attempt to make him human.