New Characters
Master: Currently in the psychiatric clinic with Ivan, he has written a novel about Pilate and Yeshua.

Master’s lover (also known as Margarita): Lives with the master in a basement apartment.

Summary
Ivan’s visitor is a dark-haired man, approximately thirty-eight years of age. He explains that he has gained access to the clinic’s common balcony by stealing some keys and could escape, but stays at the clinic because he has nowhere to go. Ivan confesses to this visitor that his poetry is bad and promises not to write any more poems. The visitor tells Ivan that Bosoy has arrived in room 119 cursing Pushkin and insisting that “unclean powers” live in apartment 50. Ivan tells the visitor he is in the clinic because of the story about Pilate and Berlioz’s death, and the visitor tells Ivan that the professor at Patriarch’s Ponds was actually Satan. Ivan, as his former self, tells the visitor they should try to catch Woland, and the visitor informs Ivan he has written a novel about Pilate, which is why he is in the clinic. Identifying himself as “a Master,” he tells Ivan he had won 100,000 rubles in a lottery and used the money to rent a basement apartment and write his novel. The master continues telling a story about his past: one day, he met a woman carrying repulsive yellow flowers in her hand on Tverskya Boulevard and fell in love with her. However, both the master and she were married, so they met secretly every afternoon in his apartment. She urged the master to keep working on his novel, but it was rejected by publishers, and two critics wrote articles attacking the manuscript. However, the article by the critic Latunsky was the most savage attack of all, and the master became mentally ill from his struggles. One day in mid-October his lover urged him to travel to the Black Sea. He gave her 10,000 rubles to keep until he departed, and she promised to return to the master the next day. That night, he set out to burn his notebooks and manuscript but was interrupted by a visit from his lover. She rescued one chapter of the novel from the fire, and she vowed to tell her husband about the affair and stay with the master permanently. She also promised him she would return in the morning. After the master retreats to the balcony and tells Ivan room 120 is now occupied by Georges Bengalsky, he continues the story, which has shifted to mid-January. In the intervening three months, the master was held by the police. On a cold night after his release, the master set out on foot for the psychiatric clinic, and was picked up by a truck driver, who took him to it. Having finished his story, the master leaves Ivan’s room and says he cannot tell any more of the story of Yeshua and Pilate, which, in ay case, would be better told by Woland.

Analysis
The master’s appearance provokes Ivan, like Riukhin, to dismiss his poems as worthless, but he, unlike Riukhin, resolves to abandon further poetic effort. Ivan’s honesty wins him the master’s confidence and advice. As he points out, Ivan’s inability to identify Satan shows how odd and illusory life in Moscow is. The populace, which has throughout the novel made the devil part of everyday conversation, is unable to identify Satan when he actually appears.

In contrast to Ivan’s meekness and willingness to obey others, the master, as he tells Ivan, firmly set out to write his novel about Pilate by himself and...