Woland’s Black Poodle Walking Stick Symbol Analysis

Woland’s walking stick is embellished with the ornate figure of a black poodle. This is one of many gestures by Bulgakov to Goethe’s Faust, in which the devil appears to the titular character as a black poodle and, like The Master and Margarita, Goethe’s work is centered on a human making a pact with the devil. Because Bulgakov quotes Faust in the epigraph, the reader expects the novel to relate to Goethe’s work, and the walking stick represents the first allusion in the main text.

Though the walking stick can be seen as a symbol of Woland’s identity as the devil, Bulgakov is careful not to reveal that specific identity until the right moment—Woland is not shown to be Satan until chapter 13. Yet when Woland first appears, interrupting a discussion between Ivan Homeless and Berlioz, the walking stick is one of the first things to arouse Berlioz’s—and by extension, the reader’s—suspicions. Because the walking stick is an unusual accessory for someone to be carrying in the Soviet Union, it marks Woland out instantly as an external visitor; as even the reader doesn’t know who Woland is at this point, the walking stick symbolizes both the possibility of his Satanic identity and the depth of his character’s mystery.

Subtly, the stick also represents Woland’s eternal nature, in drawing a link between Goethe’s story centuries before and Bulgakov’s in the 20th. Finally, the walking stick hints at the fall of Satan from heaven, in which, so the story goes, he is said to have sustained the injury. Accordingly, the walking stick also stands in for Woland’s physical (and moral) asymmetry, marking him out as fundamentally “foreign” not just to the people he walks among on earth but also to the heavenly sphere from which he originates.