MasterAndMargareadalong Post V: The devil, believe me, will arrange everything!

This is it, the final post for the final chapters of this MasterAndMargareadalong, hosted by fearless leader Alice.

I feel so naive. Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, I legitimately thought something was going to happen in these last chapters that were going to pull everything together and shed light on what we just read. My eyes would be opened and I would understand everything.

Let's see if we can make sense of this ending.

Margarita finishes reading the Master's Pilate fanfic, and instead of realizing she's made a terrible mistake, what with the whole deal-with-the-devil-for-this bit, she seems pretty happy with the story. Just...ugh. I hope you guys are happy together.

Some of the people who were disappeared are returned, though no one can explain how Woland & co. were able to do their performance and paperwork around this is a Very Big Deal. Police are trying to figure out where people have been and what's the deal with apartment 50 and oh yeah, Margarita and Natasha seem to have gone missing. Except, OF COURSE they are most concerned with the apartment, so police are dispatched there where they get into a shootout with Behemoth, who sets the apartment on fire and then jumps out the window. Now NO ONE CAN HAVE IT!

Then we get maybe one of the best chapters cos it's just Behemoth and Koroviev screwing with people and I realize I wish the book was just these guys. Maybe these 2 plus Margarita and Natasha being witches together. They show up at the restaurant/house/thing from the early chapters where all the literary people hang out, where they get fancy food before police show up to continue their shootout and another place gets set on fire.

I feel like I may have misunderstood this next part. Like, I hope I am missing something. But what I got was, Matthew Levi shows up to tell Woland that Jesus read the Master's Pilate novel AND LOVES IT!!!

It isn't quite enough to immediately get the Master and Margarita into heaven but they get "peace" and for some reason the Devil is in charge of this?

Azazello poisons M&M but then revives them, except they're still dead but now get to hang out with Woland & co. and ride around on flying horses. They fly off to somewhere and meet Pilate and his dog Banga and the Master gets to release him from his torment and what? What?

Fine. Whatever. I don't know happened with this book. Was this a happy ending? It seemed happy, but honestly I don't even know. Did Woland show up in Moscow to get the Master, and screwing with people was just something to do since he was in the area? Or was the purpose just to randomly mess with Russians and the Master thing just sort of worked out that way? Can someone else make heads or tails of this?

The point is we're finished with the book and now I can say I've read it. So success.

Title quote from page 365

Bulgakov, Mikhail. trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Master and Margarita. Penguin Classics, 1997. Originally published 1966.