Pig

The pig is a creature that surfaces in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita not as a major character but as a recurring emblem of the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and the inversion of natural order that defines the novel's supernatural incursions into Soviet Moscow. Its most prominent appearance is indirect: the black cat Behemoth, a member of Woland's retinue, is repeatedly described as being "huge as a hog" , a comparison that yokes the familiar farm animal to the demonic and the absurd. This simile first occurs during Ivan Homeless's chaotic chase, when the poet sees a tom-cat "huge as a hog, black as soot or as a rook, and with a desperate cavalryman's whiskers" walking on his hind legs. The pig here is not a literal presence but a conceptual bridge between the mundane (a pig's size and bulk) and the impossible (a cat that behaves like a person), establishing the novel's method of using animal imagery to destabilize reality.

Behemoth and the Pig as a Measure of the Grotesque

Behemoth's pig-like proportions are emphasized repeatedly. When Styopa Likhodeev, the hungover director of the Variety Theatre, first encounters Woland's retinue in his apartment, he sees "a black cat of uncanny size" sprawled on an ottoman, drinking vodka and eating pickled mushrooms with a fork. The cat's size—consistently likened to a pig's—marks him as belonging to a different order of being, one where the boundaries between species and between the natural and the supernatural have collapsed. Later, during the black magic seance, Behemoth tears off the master of ceremonies Georges Bengalsky's head and then replaces it, an act of violence and restoration that is both horrifying and farcical. The pig comparison thus becomes a shorthand for the novel's broader project: to depict a world in which the familiar is made strange, and the strange is made familiar, through the lens of folk humour and carnivalesque reversal.

The Pig in the Currency Theatre Dream

The pig also appears in the dream of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, the chairman of the tenants' association, who is arrested for currency speculation after being framed by Koroviev. In his dream, Nikanor Ivanovich finds himself in a bizarre theatre where a master of ceremonies presides over a programme of forced currency surrender. One of the seated men, a red-bearded neighbour, laments that he cannot leave because of his "fighting geese" in Lianozovo, adding: "A fighting bird's delicate, it needs care ... Ah, if it wasn't for my geese!" . The geese are not pigs, but the dream's logic of animal husbandry—where creatures are both valuable possessions and sources of anxiety—echoes the pig's role as a symbol of material wealth and bodily excess. The dream culminates in a scene where cooks serve soup and bread, urging the audience to "turn over your currency" , and the pig, though absent, haunts the margins of this grotesque spectacle as a figure of the animalistic and the appetitive.

The Pig as a Symbol of Carnivalesque Inversion

Bulgakov's use of the pig aligns with the novel's debt to the tradition of folk humour and carnival, as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin. The pig, in European folk culture, is an ambivalent symbol: it represents gluttony, filth, and stupidity, but also fertility, abundance, and the earthy vitality that opposes official, hierarchical culture. In The Master and Margarita, the pig-like Behemoth embodies this ambivalence. He is both a glutton (he drinks vodka, eats mushrooms, and stuffs himself with frankfurters) and a performer of miraculous acts (he rides a tram, pays his fare, and participates in the seance). His pig-like size and behaviour invert the norms of Soviet society, where animals are supposed to be silent, subordinate, and useful. Instead, Behemoth is articulate, insolent, and autonomous, a living challenge to the human-centred order of the world.

The Pig and the Theme of Transformation

The pig also participates in the novel's theme of transformation and the instability of identity. When the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin visits the Commission on Spectacles and Entertainment, he encounters a suit that continues to write and speak despite having no occupant—a transformation that parodies the bureaucratic dehumanization of Soviet life. Similarly, the pig-like Behemoth is a creature that has crossed the line from animal to person, from object to subject. His presence suggests that in Woland's Moscow, no category is fixed: humans become suits, cats become pigs, and pigs become agents of chaos. The pig, then, is not merely a comic prop but a figure for the novel's deeper argument about the fluidity of reality and the power of laughter to dissolve the certainties of power.