Hero's appearance
He appears before the reader in the image of a “transparent, strange-looking citizen.” The man's small head is covered with a jockey's cap. A checkered jacket is casually pulled over his body. His height is quite impressive - from a fathom. The hero's shoulders are narrow. And the surname of the thin man is very strange - Koroviev. The author describes the character's face as a face with a mocking grin. And also in the novel “The Master and Margarita” you can find other words describing Fagot’s appearance:
- thin antennae, like chicken feathers;
- small eyes with an ironic sparkle, as if the hero was always half drunk;
- plaid trousers that look slightly shot;
- dirty white socks peeking out from under the pants;
- The character's nose is decorated in some scenes with a cracked pince-nez with one missing glass;
- an incredibly long man, about two meters tall;
- thin and knobby fingers;
- sinewy neck;
- The hero's clothes look like a tattered circus costume.
“The Checkered Citizen” evokes not the best emotions among readers and people who meet him. The unkempt man wears uncleaned reddish shoes, flashes dirty socks, and always appears in the company of his demonic companion, the cat Behemoth. The author affectionately calls his book “children” an inseparable, restless couple.
For all his sloppiness, Koroviev appears in a completely different image in one of the scenes, when Woland throws a ball and then holds court. The reader sees a true knight of darkness in dark, neat clothes, a polite, courteous, dutiful demonic entity.
Checkered
The “checkered type” should hint to the attentive reader about the chess pattern, as is known, consisting of black and white cells. In one of the scenes of the novel, chess itself appears, which, according to the author’s intention, should draw the reader’s attention to this lunar symbolism.
In addition, on the table there was a large chessboard with figures, unusually skillfully made.
Is chess related to the moon? Rather, not the chess itself, but the black and white checkered pattern of the chessboard. Although, one of the chess pieces is actually connected with the Moon. More on this below. The successive black and white cells resemble the cyclically alternating lunar phases: black moon and white moon. The dark moon is the period of the invisible moon, and the white moon is the period of the full moon. And between these phenomena are the black and white halves of the waxing and waning moon.
And the chess pieces, like the squares on the board, are also black and white. One player plays as the white moon (full moon), and the other plays as the black moon (dark moon). After all, it’s not for nothing that beginning chess players are told that each queen (white and black) loves its own color.
