Structure of social relations in the novel \emph{The Master and Margarita} by M. A. Bulgakov: A network analysis of verbal communications

A network analysis of the structure of social relationships in one of the most popular Russian novels of the Soviet era The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov has been carried out. The structure of the novel is complex (`a story within a story'); the real-world- and the other-world-characters are interacting. A complex and unusual structure of the character network is expected. Presumably, the network may be split in two subgraphs owing very different properties. This complex and unusual composition makes the novel especially attractive for a network analysis. In our study, only paired verbal communications 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 dialog 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 dialogs was out of our scope, the edges have been given no weights. The largest connected component of the graph consists of 76 characters. Centralities were computed to characterize the network. The assortativity coefficient of the network under consideration is negative -0.133, i.e., the network does not demonstrate the properties of a social 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 Bezdomny, Woland, Levi Matthew, Koroviev, Azazello, Behemoth, Bosoi, Warenukha, Master, and Margarita.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables, 39 reference