Who He Is
The prisoner brought before Pontius Pilate, accused of inciting the people to destroy the temple of Yershalaim, who explains that he preached no destruction, but rather that the temple of the old faith will fall and a temple of truth will rise in its place. He lives in the Yershalaim storyline, which is the novel written by the Master and, according to Woland, what Woland witnessed. From him comes the book's moral thesis: he tells Pilate that there are no evil people, not even Mark the Rat-Killer, who had just beaten him.
any power is a violence against people, and the time will come when there will be no more power [...] Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where there will be no need for any power at all
Trajectory
In chapter 2 he calls Pilate a "good man," and Pilate has the centurion Mark teach him to say Hegemon, with a lash that knocks him down. He says that Judas of Kerioth took him into his home and asked him about the power of the state; he diagnoses the procurator's headache and his lack of affection for anyone other than the dog Banga, and calmly answers the threat of death. Caiaphas three times chooses to release Barabbas, and Yeshua is condemned along with Dismas and Gestas.
The truth, above all, is that your head is aching, and it aches so badly that you cowardly think about death
You must agree that, surely, only the one who hung the thread can cut it, can't he?
In chapter 16 he dies on the first cross at Golgotha, beside Dismas and Gestas, with Matthew Levi sitting on a stone nearby. The last word he speaks is not addressed to God.
The most resigned of them all was Yeshua.
Hegemon...
In chapter 25 Afranius repeats to Pilate what the condemned man said before dying, and in chapter 26 Levi tries to hide the body in a cave.
He said only that of all human weaknesses, the one he considers worst is cowardice.
In chapter 32 he is the one waiting for Pilate at the end of the lunar road, after nearly two thousand years, and it is to him that Woland attributes the request for refuge (see the House of Refuge) for the Master and Margarita. In the Epilogue, Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny dreams of the two of them climbing the lunar road together.
You are free! You are free! He is waiting for you!
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are Truth and lies, Power, and Courage and heroism.
Of Yeshua's words on Golgotha, two return to Pilate. One is "Hegemon," the title Pilate had Mark teach him with the lash; the other is the line about cowardice, which reaches the procurator through Afranius's report, secondhand, and which in chapter 32 Woland repeats to declare Pilate's dog guiltless.
Relationships
- Pontius Pilate: the judge who formulates the acquittal and does not carry it out, and who meets him at the end of the lunar road.
- Judas of Kerioth: who received him at home and asked him about power.
- Matthew Levi: who stays near the cross and takes the body away.
- Afranius: who reports to Pilate the line about cowardice.
- Woland: who claims to have witnessed the interrogation and picks up his words at the end.
- The Master: the author of the novel in which he lives.