Network analysis of verbal communications in the novel The Master and Margarita by M.A.Bulgakov

TL;DR

This study applies network analysis to the verbal communications in Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, revealing the complex character interactions and identifying key characters through centrality measures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel network analysis approach focused on paired verbal communications in a complex literary work, highlighting the structure and key figures within the novel.

Findings

The character network forms an undirected graph with 76 characters in the largest component.

Centrality measures identified the main characters, such as Margarita and Woland.

Community analysis revealed distinct groups, including Yershalaim and Moscow characters.

Abstract

A network analysis of the structure of verbal communications in one of the most popular Russian novels of the Soviet era The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov has been carried out. The structure of the novel is complex (a story within a story). Moreover, the real-world-characters and the other-world-characters are interacting in the novel. This complex and unusual composition makes the novel especially attractive for a network analysis. In our study, only paired verbal communications (conversations) between explicitly present and acting characters have been taken into account. Based on a character pair verbal communication matrix, a graph has been constructed, the vertices of which are the characters of the novel, while the edges correspond to the connections between them. Taking only paired verbal communications into account leads to the result, that the character network can be described by an ordinary, rather than a directed graph. Since the activity of the conversations was out of our intended scope, the edges have been given no weights. The largest connected component of the graph consists of 76 characters. Centralities, such as degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector, and assortativity coefficient were computed to characterize the network. The structure of the communities in the network was also analysed. In addition to the obvious large communities-the characters from the Yershalaim part of the novel and the characters of the Moscow part-the analysis also revealed a fine structure in the Moscow component. Using the analysis of centralities, a group of main characters has been detected. The central characters of the novel are Koroviev, Margarita, Bezdomny, Woland, Behemoth, Azazello, Bosoi, Warenukha, Master, and Levi Matthew.