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Part 12: The Frosted Rowan
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Doctor Zhivago, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and Agency
Destiny
Social Differences and Social Change
Love and Responsibility
Russian Culture and Christianity
Summary
Analysis
Outside “the house with figures,” residents of Yuriatin read the decrees of the recently reestablished Red city government. They are joined by a dirty, disheveled man, none other Yuri Zhivago after many months of travel on foot. Yuri followed the railroad west, passing various destroyed and abandoned trains and avoiding other people as best he could—the railroad is now the domain of bandits. Along the way he met Teresha Galuzin, who survived his supposed execution and escaped through the forest. Yuri knocks on Lara’s door, but no one is home. He checks the hiding place for the extra key and finds a note. Lara has already heard of his return and went to Varykino to look for him; she instructs him to wait for her in the apartment. Yuri does not notice the back page of the note and worries about the fate of his family.
With the White Army in retreat, the Bolsheviks have retaken Yuriatin, which has changed hands at least once since Yuri was last here. The final stages of the civil war have left Russian society and infrastructure even more damaged than before, with the railroads now entirely nonfunctional. Yuri’s isolated westward journey sharply contrasts with his march east through the forests and along the highway, though chance encounters with familiar figures do take place. Even now, however, word travels fast in small-town Siberia, as Lara learns of Yuri’s arrival. The unnoticed second page of her letter, meanwhile, foreshadows unexpected developments with the Zhivago family.
Themes
Yuri goes back outside to read the decrees. Astounded by the Bolsheviks’ paranoid demands for searches and seizures to find hoarded food, he faints. Helped by passersby, he goes back into Lara’s apartment and busies himself stopping up ratholes. Though he can feel himself falling ill, Yuri is determined to get a haircut. He goes to a nearby sewing shop for scissors. The seamstress agrees to cut his hair and tells him about the vicious repression carried out by the Whites during their second occupation of Yuriatin, once again tempered only by Lara’s petitions to Galliulin. Yuri deduces that the seamstress is Glafira Tuntseva, but he keeps quiet to avoid revealing his own identity. He obliquely asks her about Varykino, and she tells him that the Zhivagos escaped before the village was attacked—Alexander Alexandrovich was recalled by the government and the family returned to Moscow.
The end of the war does not mean the end of hardship and repression for the Russian people, as the Bolsheviks’ attempt to restore order—and a functioning economy—with extreme methods demonstrates. Still, Yuri is unsympathetic, though his fainting has likely more to do with exhaustion and malnutrition from his journey than his surprise at the coming Red terror. In another coincidence, Yuri finds his hairdresser to be none other than Mikulitsyn’s sister-in-law, and he is able to learn from her what happened to his family without having to reveal his identity and potentially expose himself the Bolshevik authorities. Alexander Alexandrovich’s return to Moscow suggests that with the war winding down, the new government needs experts to oversee the rebuilding of the economy. It also indicates that there is little to gain by hiding in what was an out-of-way provincial city, as Bolshevik power is secure almost everywhere. This means that for Yuri, nowhere is safe.
Themes
Back in the apartment, the rats keep Yuri awake. He busies himself again stopping up holes before lighting the stove. Noticing the firewood, he surmises that Samdevyatov has been giving Lara supplies, and he experiences a fit of jealousy. He then pines for his family and is angry with Lara for not informing him of their departure in her note. He cannot remain angry with her, however, as he yearns for her—both as a woman and a metaphor for all of Russia. Rereading the note, he discovers the other side, on which Lara explains that the Zhivagos are in Moscow and Tonya has given birth to a daughter. Yuri falls asleep and has two nightmares: first, he dreams that he is unable to save Sashenka from drowning. Then, he dreams that he is at a party winding down. In the dream, Lara is busy cleaning up and has no time to answer his urgent questions.
Yuri’s weakened, sensitive state leaves him open to paranoid delusions of his own, including an irrational fit of jealousy over Lara’s connection to Samdevyatov, who also gave the Zhivagos supplies and asked for nothing in return. Yuri’s philosophical and poetic ideas blur with his own romantic fantasies, and he thinks of Lara and Russia interchangeably, projecting onto her all his hopes, dreams, and yearning. The news of his second child confirms his earlier suspicions of Tonya’s pregnancy. Yuri’s dreams suggest that he will be unable to bridge the gap between himself and his old family, but they also hint that Lara cannot or will not give him the fulfillment he craves.
Themes
Yuri drifts between dreams and delirium, only later realizing that Lara has returned and is nursing him back to health. Though they are both obviously in love, Lara urges him to return to his family once he has recovered. The situation in Yuriatin is deteriorating, as supplies are requisitioned for Moscow and central Russia and Red terror takes hold of the city. As they predicted, Strelnikov has fallen out of favor with the party and gone into hiding. Lara explains that in Yuri’s absence, she and Tonya became close. In fact, Lara was there when Tonya gave birth to her second child, Masha, named after Yuri’s mother. Yuri confronts Lara about her relationship with Samdevyatov. She tells him he has nothing to be jealous about; the conversation then turns to Komarovsky and his influence on each of their lives.
Yuri once again emerges from a bout of extreme illness unsure of what was reality and was merely a dream. Yuri and Lara resume their affair but bracket it within a state of exception. They tell themselves that he will go back to his family soon, but whether either of them truly believes that is left unclear. The same rebuilding process that has called Alexander Alexandrovich back to the capital is actually worsening the situation in the provinces, as Bolshevik repression ramps up to secure Soviet power farther from the capital. Strelnikov has gone from being an asset to a threat to the local communists because of his distance from the party—non-party professional soldiers in the Red Army were necessary allies, but now the Bolsheviks view them with suspicion. The fates of the Zhivago and Antipov families become increasingly intertwined, as Lara’s budding friendship with Tonya while Yuri was with the partisans and Lara and Zhivago’s own shared history with Komarovsky show.
Themes
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Lara tells Yuri that she saw Strelnikov once before he left Yuriatin. She longs for her husband, the old Pasha Antipov, and claims she would give up everything—even her love for Yuri —if she knew Strelnikov could become that man again, but she is doubtful that he can give up his quest against the world. Yuri busies himself with work, planning to depart soon for Moscow to find his family. Yuri is increasingly disturbed by the revolutionary tribunal’s conception of justice, as Tiverzin and Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov, back in power in Yuriatin, brutally repress those they consider enemies of the revolution. Lara considers relocating to Varykino, and she plans to entrust Katenka to the Tuntseva sisters if she is arrested.
The kinds of love Lara feels for Yuri and for Strelnikov are so different that she is able to talk openly with Yuri about her feelings for her estranged husband, much like Yuri is able to talk to Lara about Tonya without jealousy. It’s an openness that neither is able to feel with their respective spouses. Lara surmises that Strelnikov’s attempt at reinvention has actually set him on a path toward self-destruction, as he failed to see that all he needed to remake his life and find happiness was himself and his family. The Red terror becomes more and more intense, with Pavel Antipov even hunting his own son, though whether he is aware of Strelnikov’s true identity is left unclear.
Themes
Yuri returns home to find Lara listening to Simushka Tuntseva, who is a philosophical admirer of Nikolai Nikolaevich. Simushka explains her theory that human life can be divided into two categories: God and work. Christianity, she argues, is one long and still incomplete historical undertaking to know God. Simushka does not deny the importance of the revolution but sees it as merely a small step on the way to humankind’s true destiny. She then analyzes the story of Mary Magdalene, emphasizing the complicated relationship between Christian judgement and forgiveness. Glafira arrives with a letter for Yuri . In it, Tonya informs him that Alexander Alexandrovich and the family are being sent into exile. She expresses her deep love for Yuri even though she believes he does not love her back and bids him farewell. Yuri , devastated, collapses onto the couch and faints.
Simushka’s theory of Christianity and history has much in common with Yuri’s own philosophy, reflecting the formative influence of Nikolai Nikolaevich on them both. Still, the particular way in which Simushka thinks about the world makes a strong impression on Yuri, who will later incorporate her ideas into his poetry. Tonya’s letter, however, sweeps away these abstract reveries. By the early 1920s, the Soviet government was securely in power, and a substantial Russian emigre community had developed in western Europe, leading the Bolsheviks to opt to deport less dangerous political enemies—like the non-communist socialist Alexander Alexandrovich—rather than execute or imprison them. Tonya’s letter expressions the deep pain Yuri has caused her, but while it certainly must feel true to her, her accusation that he does not love is not strictly correct—Yuri does love Tonya, but not the way that she loves him, and not the way that he loves Lara. This is an incongruity that Tonya is understandably unable to accept.
Themes
