Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 131 - Witness
There are usually more witnesses than heroes or villains.
Welcome to Issue 131 of Deep Life Reflections, where each Friday I share reflections on how to live more deeply, inspired by literature, cinema, and life itself. This is the first one from my new home, Spain.
This week, we explore the twin themes of courage versus cowardice, and the interdependence of good and evil, through two renowned works shaped by the darkness of their time: The Master and Margarita and Seven.
Join me for this week’s Friday Five.
1. What I’m Reading
The Master and Margarita. By Mikhail Bulgakov.
Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa but never intended anyone to see it. Or if Paul McCartney wrote and recorded Yesterday only for himself. In 1928, Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov began work on The Master and Margarita—now considered his masterpiece. But he had no intention of publishing it. Simply having such a manuscript would almost certainly have led to his permanent disappearance in Stalinist Russia. And yet, the book was of great importance to him.
The novel wouldn’t be published until 1966—twenty-six years after Bulgakov’s death. It took Moscow by storm. The first 150,000 copies sold out within hours. People couldn’t stop talking about it. The very language was a direct challenge to the sterile, wooden prose of the Soviet regime. Bulgakov’s novel injected an artistic and spiritual freedom into the bloodstream of a state that had gone pale and gaunt.
The book is a surreal satire of Soviet life, where the Devil and his entourage arrive in Moscow one spring afternoon, leaving chaos, witchcraft, vampirism, and even Satan’s annual ball in their wake. Bulgakov wrote it during one of the darkest periods in Russian history—a time of forced collectivisation, constant secret police surveillance, and Stalin’s Great Purge.
The main characters include the unnamed writer known as ‘the Master,’ his lover Margarita, the poet Ivan Homeless, and Woland (Satan). ‘Woland’ is a variant of the devil’s name that appears in Faust, and the novel has strong roots to German romanticism and folklore. There’s also a colourful cast of supporting characters, drawn largely from the Moscow art world.
There is a second distinct but connected part of the novel set in ancient Jerusalem, where we follow a retelling of Pontius Pilate’s decision to execute Jesus and the torment and guilt he subsequently suffers. Bulgakov likely included this storyline as a direct response to Soviet anti-religious propaganda, which portrayed Christ as a myth. By contrast, Bulgakov restores a kind of sacred reality to the figure of Jesus, calling him ‘Yeshua Ha-Nozri’ (the Aramaic name for Jesus of Nazareth) and does so through an unlikely agent: Woland, Satan himself. In a sense, it’s the reversal of the gospel story, where the Devil doesn’t tempt or lie, but exposes the lies of the state and destabilises the very reality Soviet ideology tries to impose.
The novel has many themes at play, but two stand out. The first is courage versus cowardice. For Bulgakov, cowardice is “the worst sin of all.” His plotlines converge on this idea—that standing up for the truth, despite risk or fear, is the ultimate test of character. Guilt, too, is always close by. Even the Master—a supposed ‘hero’— doesn’t get a clean ending. He’s granted peace, not light. Bulgakov seems to imply that guilt and cowardice are central to the human story. He may well have been reflecting on his own complicity.
In 1930, desperate and unable to find work, Bulgakov made a direct appeal to the Soviet government. He received a personal phone call from Stalin himself, who had long admired his talent. Stalin helped him secure a position at the Moscow Art Theatre.
The second theme is the co-dependency of good and evil. The novel is highly philosophical. Woland is a complicated character, certainly not the traditional figure of Satan as the embodiment of evil. He isn’t evil for evil’s sake. He’s precise, even principled, punishing the vain, the greedy, the hypocritical. But there is no doubt: he is Satan. Bulgakov suggests that evil is not just inevitable but necessary. Without it, “the earth has no shadows.” Without shadows, life has no depth. No contrast. No meaning.
During the First World War, Bulgakov worked in frontline hospitals. He later established his own medical practice before becoming one of Russia’s most acclaimed writers. Having lived through so much darkness, perhaps The Master and Margarita was inevitable.
Despite burning his own work more than once, Bulgakov’s most famous line from The Master and Margarita turned out to be true:
“Manuscripts don’t burn.”
More than a statement about literature, Soviet citizens recognised its inherent truth: that imagination, the human spirit, and the free word will outlast fear, terror, and oppression.
Art made in darkness can still illuminate.
2. What I’m Watching
Seven (1995). Directed by David Fincher.
If you’ve seen David Fincher’s, Seven, you’ll probably remember two things: the rain, and the box. This isn’t so much a crime film as a sermon written in blood. It takes place in a city without a name, drenched in filth, where virtue is ineffective and evil is methodical, always in control.
Currently ranked #20 on IMDb’s Top 250, Seven is one of the darkest films ever made in mainstream American cinema. Some films assault the senses so completely that one viewing is enough—Requiem for a Dream comes to mind. Yet I can return to Seven again and again and would have no hesitation recommending it to anyone. Despite its bleakness, it is completely enthralling, constructed by David Fincher with precision, intelligence, and purpose. It’s close to perfect.
Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is days from retirement. His reluctant partner, Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt), is newly arrived and eager to make a difference. On their first day together, a man is found dead—forced to eat himself to death at gunpoint. Gluttony. The first of the seven deadly sins.
Further murders follow: greed, sloth, lust, pride. Each murder is macabre and executed with theological rigour. The killer—John Doe—is not a man of impulse but of conviction. He’s building his sermon in the flesh, delivering retribution to those he deems ‘worthy.’ We see a lawyer forced to cut an exact pound of flesh from his body. He is Greed.
Somerset recognises this immediately. He retreats to the public library, reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Dante’s The Divine Comedy as Bach’s Suite No. 3 in D Major plays through the speakers. We suspect this is not the first time he’s read these works. Somerset is trying to understand the shape of evil. Mills sticks to the Cliff Notes.
Seven is very much a character study—and a study in contrasts. In Somerset, we have a man who has seen it all. He sleeps with a metronome—symbolic of patience, steadiness, and an attempt to impose rhythm on chaos. He is virtuous but impotent, culturally literate yet weary from his environment. Mills by contrast is brave but reactive, all emotion and no distance. He wants to act. Often recklessly. Somerset dreads the consequences of action. He has never fired his gun. Mills has.
Somerset shares more in common with John Doe. They are opposite sides of the same coin. Both are ascetics. Both believe the world is broken. Only one sees redemption as impossible.
With more than half an hour of the film remaining, John Doe turns himself in. Here we learn more about his elaborate murders as moral statements. His weaponisation of the seven deadly sins. On rewatches, it’s clear the infamous opening credits already told us who he is: the tops of his fingers sliced off to avoid fingerprints, the meticulous preparation for his victims. Unlike standard films, the credits roll backwards, from top to bottom, a subtle nod to inverted theology. Fincher said he wanted the credits to look like a killer had written them. A reverse gospel.
And then the ending, which I won’t spoil.
In Orthodox Christianity, despair is sometimes called the eighth deadly sin. A fitting epitaph for Somerset’s final words:
“Ernest Hemingway once said the world is a good place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.”
3. What I’m Contemplating
In both The Master and Margarita and Seven, we are given only witnesses. There are no heroes. And there’s a common message: evil doesn’t need to seduce; it only needs to be ignored.
Bulgakov’s Woland and Fincher’s John Doe are Satanic figures, not liars but unmaskers. They don’t corrupt the innocent; they reveal the already damned, administering punishment that often massively exceeds the crime. They would argue that they are necessary figures. That they exist because life exists.
Both expose moral rot through performance, judgement, and ritual. And in both stories, the price of courage is high, but the cost of cowardice is higher. We see this in Somerset and Pontius Pilate: men tempted by retreat, weary, paralysed by the consequences of action. They pay a heavy price.
While reading more about Bulgakov, I came across an idea: that once terror becomes identified with the world, it becomes invisible. In The Master and Margarita, Stalinist Moscow is portrayed not with pity but with a kind of theatricality—grotesque, carnivalesque, almost routine. The citizens have adjusted. They’ve learned to play along.
As they always do.
4. A Quote to note
“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. A Question for you
Can someone be deeply flawed yet still act as a moral mirror for others?
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Have a great weekend. Stay intentional.
James