Who He Is
The procurator of Judea in the novel that the Master writes and whom, according to Woland, Woland witnessed. He receives Yeshua Ha-Notzri for trial, concludes that the prisoner is a harmless philosopher and, even so, confirms the death sentence.
Trajectory
In chapter 2, with an unbearable migraine and the smell of rose oil that has followed him since dawn, he interrogates Yeshua and has the centurion Mark teach him, with a lash, to call him Hegemon. The prisoner diagnoses his headache and his lack of affection for anyone other than the dog Banga.
The truth, above all, is that your head is aching, and it aches so badly that you cowardly think about death
Convinced that Yeshua is a vagrant philosopher and a mentally ill man, he formulates in thought the mildest sentence, imprisonment in Caesarea. One fact prevents it: the record registers a remark by Yeshua against the power of Caesar. When Yeshua says that the kingdom of truth will come, Pilate shouts the opposite and confirms the sentence; he still tries to save him through the Passover release, but Caiaphas chooses Barabbas, and before the crowd Pilate announces the death of Yeshua, Dismas, and Gestas.
He'll never come!
In chapter 25, under the storm, he receives from Afranius the account of Golgotha and the condemned man's last remark, which reaches him secondhand.
He said only that of all human weaknesses, the one he considers worst is cowardice.
He then asks Afranius to protect Judas of Kerioth, because he had supposedly received word that they would kill him that night, and he insists on his own intuition. In chapter 26, Afranius reports Judas's death as a failure of the guard, Pilate reacts with satisfaction, and, in front of Matthew Levi, who swears to kill Judas, he reveals what he had done.
It was me
In chapter 32, the Master and Margarita find him seated there for almost two thousand years, tormented by insomnia on full-moon nights (see the Moon). Woland explains that he always dreams of finishing the conversation interrupted with the prisoner. The Master sets him free, and Pilate runs along the lunar road, behind the dog, to meet Yeshua.
You are free! You are free! He is waiting for you!
In the Epilogue, Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny dreams every year of the two of them climbing the lunar road together, and of Pilate's plea.
What a vile execution! Please tell me [...] that it never happened! I beg you, tell me, did it not happen?
Themes Embodied
The novel's themes that run through him are Courage and heroism, Power, and Forgiveness.
The novel does not make him cruel for its own sake: it makes him the judge who sees innocence and does not uphold it. That is why the line about cowardice, spoken by Yeshua and repeated by Woland at the end, falls on him, and the forgiveness of chapter 32 comes from the author who wrote him, not from a court.
Relationships
- Yeshua Ha-Notzri: the prisoner he judges, condemns, and meets at the end of the lunar road.
- Afranius: the chief of the secret guard, who carries out for him what cannot be spoken.
- Judas of Kerioth: the informer he orders protected and whose death he claims before Levi.
- Matthew Levi: the disciple who refuses his offer to serve in his library in Caesarea.
- Woland: who claims to have witnessed the interrogation and who shows him to the Master at the end.
- The Master: the author of the novel in which he lives, and the one who frees him.