What It Is
The full moon, which in the novel marks Satan's ball, the insomnia of Pontius Pilate, and the yearly restlessness of Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny in the Epilogue. In chapter 32 it is also the light that undoes the retinue's disguises during the flight, and the path up which Pilate climbs to meet Yeshua.
Where It Appears
The highlighted passage is the one where Woland presents Pilate on the stony plain, in chapter 32.
For about two thousand years he has been in this spot, and he sleeps, but when the full moon comes, as you can see, he is tormented by insomnia.
The other appearances are recorded without an entry of their own. In chapter 22, Korovyov explains that every hostess of the "full moon ball" must be named Margarita. In chapter 32, the Moon undoes the disguises of Korovyov, Behemoth, and the Master during the flight; Pilate dreams of following the path of the Moon to finish his conversation with Yeshua; once freed, he runs along the lunar path to a garden grown over a thousand moons; and in the Epilogue Ivan returns every spring full moon to the bench at Patriarch's Ponds and dreams of Pilate and Yeshua climbing the lunar road together.
What It Means
In chapters 30 to 32 and the Epilogue, it remains open whether Ivan's symptom is a residual illness or the only part of his story that is still true.
The Moon links the end of Pilate to the end of Ivan: the same full moon that kept the procurator awake for two thousand years is the one that brings Ivan, every year, to the bench where the story began, and it is on the lunar road that Ivan sees Pilate in a dream, already beside Yeshua.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Dream and fantasy, Memory and the past, Forgiveness.
- Characters: Pontius Pilate, Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny, Yeshua Ha-Notzri, Margarita.
- Neighboring symbols: the House of Refuge, the Master's fate in the same scene in which Pilate takes the lunar road, and Frida's handkerchief, the other punishment that repeats itself.