The Master and Margarita Essay

Rubric – Reading Fiction Essay

Your essay is worth 100 points total, with up to 50 points available from each box below. You will not be graded on format, but do your best to adhere to MLA. At the least, your essay needs be double-spaced, with the pages numbered, and have your name on it.

Exam total: 100 pts. (50 from each box below).
Length requirement: 4-6 pages, double-spaced.
Format: MLA (this will not count as part of your grade, but try your best).
Due Date: See Syllabus.

1: Use the methods and techniques of literary study to develop the skills of close reading and literary analysis
0: Paper demonstrates no skill in close reading and literary analysis
10: Paper demonstrates a minimal amount of skill in close reading and literary analysis
20: Paper demonstrates satisfactory skill in close reading and literary analysis
30: Paper demonstrates good skills in close reading and literary analysis
40. Paper demonstrates excellent skills in close reading and literary analysis
50: Paper demonstrates skills in close reading and literary analysis beyond an undergraduate level

2: Write with clarity, originality, grammatical correctness, proper usage, and logic, demonstrating rhetorical skill necessary for successful communication.
0: Paper demonstrates no skill in writing
10: Paper demonstrates minimal skill in writing
20: Paper demonstrates satisfactory skill in writing
30: Paper demonstrates good skill in writing
40: Paper demonstrates excellent skill in writing
50: Paper demonstrates skill in writing beyond an undergraduate level

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Why does Woland come to Moscow? Why does he give a public performance at the Variety Theater?

• Why is Woland the instrument of Margarita’s kindness toward Frieda and the master?

• When Woland sees Margarita’s compassion for Pilate, why does he tell her, “Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that”? (p. 382)

• Why has the master earned peace, but not light?

• Why does Pilate dream that he is involved in an “interesting and endless” argument with Yeshua, “this philosopher, who had thought up such an incredibly absurd thing as that all men are good,” and that Yeshua’s execution never took place? (p. 319)

• Why must Margarita become a witch and host Woland’s ball in order to rescue and be reunited with the master?

• Why does Margarita become devoted to the master’s novel?

• Why is the story of Pontius Pilate presented as not only written by the master, but also told by Woland, dreamed by Ivan, and read by Margarita?

• When Woland asks what she wants, why does Margarita choose to free Frieda from her punishment?

• Why must the master and Margarita leave the material world at the end of the novel?

• Why does Woland insist, against the beliefs of Berlioz and Ivan, that Jesus really existed?

• When Nikanor Ivanovich dreams that he is being interrogated, why does interrogation take the form of a number in a stage production?

• Why is the master’s real name never revealed?