Professor Preobrazhensky

Professor Preobrazhensky is a surgeon whose act of transforming a dog into a human being sets the central conflict in motion. In the closing scene, he sits in his apartment beside the restored dog, while the accusation that he and his associates murdered the transformed man is answered by the dog’s quiet presence and the professor’s return to surgical work. His ending joins professional composure to the consequences of his experiment: the creature he altered has returned to canine life, but the operation’s violence and responsibility remain visible in the scene’s structure.

Identity and Professional Role

The professor is associated with extraordinary medical authority and the power to intervene in the boundary between animal and human. The narrative presents him as both the celebrated benefactor of dogs and the surgeon who persistently searches through a brain during the operation that the dog witnesses as a terrible sight. These two roles do not resolve into a simple opposition: his care for the animal coexists with the invasive procedure that changes its life.

His final identity is conveyed through the contrast between the operating room and domestic space. The professor sits in his chair in the apartment, while Doctor Bormenthal tidies the shelves in the consulting room. The ordinary work of putting the room in order continues around the aftermath of an experiment that has disturbed the distinction between patient, animal, and human subject.

Naming and the Making of Sharikov

The professor first addresses the dog as Sharik, a name that the dog accepts as part of the encounter in which the stranger gives him food. That naming belongs to a moment of dependence: the dog responds to the man as the one who has saved his life. The name later becomes the starting point for the transformed figure’s full human identity.

When the man is asked to choose a name, he declares himself Toligraph Poligraphovich. The professor rejects this as unserious and presses him to answer properly. Asked what surname he will take, the man says he will use his real name. Shvonder then proposes a certificate identifying the bearer as Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov and describing his birthplace as the flat. The professor protests that the man was not born at all, exposing the gap between the biological circumstances of his creation and the official language being used to register him.

The naming sequence makes identity a matter of competing claims. The professor regards the man as the result of an operation, while the man asserts a real name and Shvonder seeks to give that name documentary force. The proposed certificate would convert the experimental subject into a formally identified resident; the professor’s objection insists that administrative recognition cannot erase how the man came into existence.

Accusation and Composure

Ten days after the struggle, an official reads a charge against the professor, Doctor Bormenthal, Zinaida Bunina, and Darya Ivanova for the murder of Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov, described as a sub-department controller of the Moscow Cleansing Department. The accusation presents the transformed man as a missing person whose death may be attributed to those who had been responsible for him. Its formal wording sharply contrasts with the professor’s account of the figure as the dog he had operated on.

The professor answers with a regal shrug and professes not to understand who Sharikov is, then identifies him as his dog and the subject of his operation. The response is controlled and deliberately reframes the charge: rather than confirm the official identity or engage with the accusation on its terms, he points to the animal at the centre of the experiment. The scene leaves the accusation in place while making its premise unstable, since the supposed victim is present as a dog.

When the man reading the charge faints, the professor instructs those present to give him valerian. His practical response contrasts with the turmoil around the accusation and preserves his composure amid the sudden commotion. Doctor Bormenthal threatens to throw Shvonder downstairs if he returns to the professor’s flat, and Shvonder asks that the remark be entered in the report. The exchange keeps the conflict over the household alive even as the apparent criminal case collapses into disorder.

Restoration and the Closing Scene

The final tableau settles the immediate transformation plot without erasing its history. The restored dog lies stretched out on the carpet beside a leather couch, while the professor sits nearby. Grey accordion-shaped radiators hiss gently, and blinds shut out the night sky over Prechistenka Street. The domestic calm is concrete, but it is not an uncomplicated return to an untouched past: the dog’s head still aches in the mornings around the circular scar on his skull, though the pain eases as the evening warmth returns.

From the consulting room comes the sound of Bormenthal tidying glassware, while the professor hums the refrain “. . . to the banks of the sacred Nile . . .” The tune recurs as the dog witnesses the professor’s search through a brain, linking the present quiet to the earlier operation. In the closing passage the professor is again at work, examining and slicing as he sings “To the banks of the sacred Nile . . .” The repetition makes medical practice and its consequences occupy the same frame: the professor’s attention returns to the work, while the dog’s warm, comfortable thoughts register a life restored to a familiar domestic relation with him.

The dog considers himself fortunate to be settled in the flat, while remaining uncertain about his pedigree and treating the changes to his head as none of his concern. That inward perspective makes the ending more than a simple reversal of the experiment. The dog’s immediate comfort stands beside the scar, the remembered operation, the formal accusation, and the professor’s continued work; the narrative restores a household arrangement without claiming that the intervention or its ethical burden has disappeared.