Ronald LeBLanc "The Quest for nourishment in Sobache Serdtse"

B writing a satire of Homo Soveticus in the transformation gone awry of the dog Sharik to the quasi-man Sharikov. LeBlanc states that this is also the transformation of class. Sharik goes from a homeless dog to the comfort class. He shows that it is not just a political and social change, but one that also concerns food. B uses the gastronomic terms to describe the disgust he has with the new system. This is not new in literature and can be seen in Chekhov and Molier. The alignment of food and bodily sustinence with spiritual is well represented. B uses the same in M and M to discuss the members of the Dom Griboedov that take place in the "mushroom house" a place where minds are to be enhanced and grown, but really the house better known for the restaurant. B shows that too much concern for one's belly does not leave any room for thought or for the soul in metaphoric sense. 59

In SS he shows not how food represents the materialism, but to show the system that has produced a lack of food and rampant hunger for the people. 60 The novel opens with a defamiliarization from the pov of the dog that only wants food and shelter. He is not unlike the lower classes that are forced to root in the garbage and have no where to go. Physical demands have replaced any spiritual as a result of the War communism and NEP. The dichotomy of the social order places the wealthy at the top that can enjoy real food and the lower class on the bottom that have nothing. The typist woman is forced to eat bad soup and is on the same economic level as the dog as she is a working class person. She is made sick by the food she can afford in the cafeteria and yet she has nowhere else to go. She even succumbs to the level where she is willing to sleep with Sharikov just to get a decent meal. 62

Sharik the dog understands that when he first meets the professor that the professor is too well groomed to be eating sausage where he has bought it and had just as well give it to the dog. The people that the dog mostly comes in contact with are cooks. There are bad cooks that throw boiling water on dogs and there are good cooks that give you special food. It is the same difference for the people - there are some that are forced to cook at the terribel cafeteria and some that get to cook for the Tolstoy family. The mass population of the country of course eat like the lower end. The narrator asks if this is the nourishment she needs? What then is the saving class in the country? It is the gentry class, the one represented by the dr that is able to bring sausage to the people and help them out. However, the price of sustinece is your freedom.

The novel is as much a question of giving up one's freedom and rights for safety and food. Sharik becomes a gentle dog when he enteres the home of the dr. He even begins to take pride in the shackles, the collar and chain her wears, because the doorman and the other dogs know that in wearing these he has become a well fed, but kept dog. Giving up the spiritual side for comfort is selling out in the way of the dwindling upper class.

On the other hand when he is able to conquer his needs for food and shelter on the basic level he is freeer to look to the more civilized ways of life. He is now able to pleasure in the act of eating and gets fattened up at the drs. He eats now out of pleasure and is able to seek out other pleasures in life too. He has reached a new level of humanity. From necessity to desire. Sharik seems to live in a world where the immediate needs need to be fullfilled before the higher forms of art can be fulfilled. Dr. Bormental is similar to the dog. He was once a starving mediacal studen before the doctor brought him in and made a man and a dr out of him. All of this taken togetther sugess that the proletariaot cannot hope to find nourishment in the new Bolshevik Russia. Instead of giving food, they have taken it away, instead of giving high culture, they have put the vulgar and the philistine on the pedistal. 67

The moral center of the story is in the Dr., but this leads to some problems. He is a mad scientist, though he has fine manners and good tastes. he is also someone that has thrived in the NEP era because he questionably serves those that can afford him. The Dr serves as someone that has fed the poor dog, but also feeds off of him in a vampiric way. 68