Amert, Susan. “The Dialectics of Closure in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.” The Russian Review 61, no. 4 (October 2002): 599-617.

In the essay below, Amert explores the notion of endings—particularly death, but also narrative endings—in The Master and Margarita.

Some of it Pilate could read: “There is no death ….”

The Master and Margarita, chapter 26

The beginning of The Master and Margarita features a transparent allusion to Tolstoy's “Death of Ivan Il'ich.” It comes as Woland is disputing Ivan Bezdomnyi's claim that human beings control their own lives:

Imagine that you, for example, begin to rule, to be in charge of both others and yourself … and suddenly you get … heh-heh … lung cancer … and your rule is finished! No one's fate interests you any more but your own. Your kinfolk begin lying to you. Sensing that something is wrong, you rush to see learned physicians, then quacks, perhaps even fortune-tellers. … But...