Heart of a Dog

Heart of a Dog makes the boundary between animal and human its central problem. A dog identified in the case record as a roughly two-year-old mongrel named Sharik becomes Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov after an operation, but neither a new name nor human speech settles what kind of being he is. The novel’s title returns at the point of crisis: the dispute is not simply whether Sharikov behaves like a dog, but whether his conduct reflects an animal inheritance or a human character.

Animal and Human Identity

The novel first presents Sharik as a dog whose relationship with a stranger begins with food and naming. The gentleman offers him a piece of sausage labelled “Special Cracower,” then calls him Sharik. The name is bestowed from outside, but the dog accepts the encounter as an immediate bond: the stranger has given him food, and Sharik responds with gratitude and submission. This opening makes animal experience more than a specimen to be examined; Sharik is already a perceiving subject, registering need, relief, and attachment.

The case record later renders him in clinical terms: a male mongrel, approximately two years old, named Sharik. That documentary description sits uneasily beside the dog’s own perspective. He is at once an individual who experiences his circumstances and an experimental subject classified by age, sex, breed, and name. The novel’s later transformation intensifies this tension, making the question of identity inseparable from who has the power to describe and classify him.

Naming and Administrative Identity

After his transformation, Sharik is asked what he proposes to call himself. He supplies the first name Toligraph Poligraphovich, and, when asked about a surname, insists on using his real name. Shvonder helps turn the answer into paperwork: the proposed certificate identifies its bearer as Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov and locates his birth in the apartment. The exchange treats naming as more than a personal choice. A name can be spoken, disputed, written down, and used to claim a place in society.

The certificate also exposes the contradiction at the heart of that claim. Sharikov is described as having been born in the apartment, although he was not born there in the ordinary sense; he is the product of an operation performed on Sharik. The administrative formula translates an unusual origin into a legible human biography, without resolving the biological and ethical questions the transformation has raised. Naming grants Sharikov a public identity while making the circumstances of its creation harder to state plainly.

The Dog’s Heart and the Human Character

The novel’s most explicit argument over the title comes when Doctor Bormenthal calls Sharikov a man with the heart of a dog. Professor Preobrazhensky rejects the description as an insult to dogs. He argues that Sharikov’s pursuit of cats is a remnant of canine behaviour still attached to a canine brain, and predicts that it will fade as the transplanted pituitary takes root. In his account, chasing cats is temporary and comparatively harmless; the deeper problem is the heart Sharikov now has as a human being, which Preobrazhensky calls exceptionally rotten.

The disagreement turns the title into a moral and interpretive dispute. Bormenthal uses the phrase to explain Sharikov by reference to his animal past; Preobrazhensky insists that animal behaviour should not be confused with human wickedness. The irony is sharp: the dog’s name and body persist within the new identity, but neither doctor accepts that canine ancestry alone accounts for the conduct that troubles them. The transformation therefore unsettles any simple hierarchy in which animal signifies badness and human signifies improvement.

Records, Rumour, and Public Claims

The novel presents the transformation through competing kinds of evidence. Bormenthal’s case notes record the observations and conclude that the experiment has produced a new organism that must be studied as such; the notes are accompanied by speech reports, recordings, and photographs. That conclusion is provisional rather than triumphant. It classifies the result without claiming that the experiment has delivered a settled account of personhood.

Outside the apartment, rumour turns the experiment into public spectacle. Crowds gather in the street, dogs collect beneath the windows, and newspapers circulate contradictory stories, including reports of a Martian and of a child born able to play the violin. Bormenthal describes the consequences as potentially incalculable and the situation as a nightmare. The rumours show how little control the experimenters retain over the story once it escapes the case record: observation gives way to sensational invention, and the public recasts an uncertain organism as whatever its circulating accounts require.

That struggle over description becomes political as well as scientific. In a letter, Sharikov accuses Preobrazhensky and Bormenthal of counter-revolutionary speech, accuses the professor of ordering Engels burned, and describes Bormenthal as secretly living in the apartment without registration. Later, an official reads a charge accusing Preobrazhensky, Bormenthal, Zinaida Bunina, and Darya Ivanova of murdering Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov, identified as a sub-department controller in the City of Moscow Cleansing Department. The allegation treats Sharikov as a person whose death is a prosecutable crime; Preobrazhensky answers by asking who Sharikov is and saying that the name refers to the dog on whom he operated. The ending makes the conflict over identity a conflict over which account institutions will recognize.

Significance of the Title

The title does not offer a stable answer to what is human or animal. Sharik begins as a dog with an individual perspective; Sharikov acquires a human name and an administrative role; the doctors disagree over whether his behaviour is canine residue or evidence of human character. The case notes, newspaper reports, certificate, and accusation each record a different version of what he is, and none can by itself settle the question.

By carrying the dog’s identity into the transformed figure’s name and the novel’s final dispute, Heart of a Dog makes classification part of the story’s action. Scientific intervention creates a being who cannot be fully explained by the categories available to his creators, while political and legal documents attempt to fix him within those categories. The title’s force lies in that unresolved contradiction: the dog is neither merely a metaphor nor a past identity safely left behind, but the continuing measure against which the claims of human status are tested.