Previous
Part 1: The Five O’Clock Express
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
Several years later, in 1905, Russia is at war with Japan and overcome by massive civil unrest which threatens to escalate into all-out revolution. Amidst the chaos the widowed Madame Guichard moves to Moscow with her children, Lara and Rodion. Madame Guichard buys a dressmaker’s shop but remains dependent on her husband’s lawyer, Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, for financial advice and emotional support. Though Komarovsky and Madame Guichard have an ongoing, torrid relationship, Komarovsky can barely disguise his interest in Lara. The dressmaker’s shop, meanwhile, is largely run by its competent staff. One of the apprentices, Olya Demina, takes Lara under her wing. The workers resent Komarovsky’s presence but are unable to prevent a secret affair from beginning between Lara and Komarovsky. Lara, only 16, is overwhelmed by the excitement of romance and the disturbing nature of Komarovsky’s power over her.
The simmering social tension alluded to earlier came to a head in 1905, when Russia’s disastrous war with Japan provoked a national uprising. The Guichards are precarious property owners and are not invested in supporting either the regime or the revolutionaries. Madame Guichard is at once a liberated and traditional, subservient woman: she is still reliant on Komarovsky even though she is nominally independent and financially self-sufficient. The family has a closer, more familiar relationship to their workers than most capitalists, as Olya Demina’s friendship with Lara suggests. Lara, for her part, is both flattered and intimidated by Komarovsky’s advances, an understandable reaction for someone so young and inexperienced.
Themes
In the fall of 1905 railroad workers in Moscow decide to strike. The workers on the Brest railroad, near the Guichards’ home and business, wait out a final payment of wages before joining the general strike. Railroad foreman Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov, advocating for repairs and improvements, is ignored by corrupt managers. He and Tiverzin, an engineer, make the rounds to ensure everyone has been paid before the strike begins. Suddenly other workers call him over to the workshop, where the engine master Khudoleev is viciously abusing his apprentice Yusupka Gimazetdin. Yusupka’s father works in Tiverzin’s building and the engineer intervenes on his behalf, but the other workers break up their fight before it escalates. Tiverzin storms out just as the general walkout—and strike—begins.
After a major wave of social unrest in early 1905, a series of strikes following Russia’s defeat in the war in early September reignited the revolution; in Moscow these railroad strikes soon led to a citywide general strike. Railroads were a critical and advanced industry in prerevolutionary Russia, connecting the vast country and ensuring the transport of people and commodities—and, in wartime, soldiers—across the empire. The strikes were motivated both by workers’ labor complaints and hopes for better wages and a broader demand for political freedom, uniting the manual laborers like Antipov and specialists like Tiverzin.
Themes
Tiverzin returns home two days later to learn that he is a wanted man and that Antipov has been arrested. The Tiverzins adopt Antipov’s son, Patulya, a quiet and intelligent boy. Patulya attends a mass demonstration with Tiverzin’s mother, Marfa Gavrilovna, but they only narrowly escape when the protest is violently put down by Cossacks. Nikolai Nikolaevich watches the same demonstration from his window, recognizing Dudorov in the crowd. Nikolai Nikolaevich has moved in with his relatives the Sventitskys, eagerly diving into the revolutionary atmosphere in Moscow. Yuri now lives with the Gromekos, a happy and well-adjusted family with a daughter the same age, Tonya, and has become good friends with his classmate Misha Gordon.
The crackdown against the Moscow uprising is swift and brutal, with many revolutionaries arrested, deported, or executed. The violent suppression of the revolution only increases support for it, however, as women and children like Patulya and Marfa Gavrilovna go out to protest on the workers’ behalf. When these peaceful demonstrations face violent suppression, the workers’ uprising becomes more militant. Yuri is insulated from the revolution, however— for him and his immediate family (with the exception of Dudorov), the revolution is largely an abstract, intellectual matter.
Themes
The lawyer Komarovsky lives a luxurious bachelor’s life with his bulldog and spinster housekeeper in the Petrovsky Lines. Lara, meanwhile, is consumed by guilt over her Komarovsky’s budding romance, and she fears what her mother would do if she were to learn of it. Komarovsky is less concerned by what Madame Guichard might think, but he is surprised at how obsessed he is with Lara. In a fit of rage over the loss of self-control he experiences because of Lara, he kicks his dog down the stairs and urges himself not to let their affair upset his carefully cultivated habits. Lara cannot quite grasp her own feelings towards Komarovsky. While she feels some revulsion toward him, she also feels gratification from the older man’s advances. The only thing that’s clear to her is that she sees no way of breaking free.
The uneven power dynamic in Komarovsky and Lara’s affair is ironically inverted in the lawyer’s mind, as he feels his tight self-control start to slip when he is faced with his underage lover. Komarovsky’s attitude suggests Lara is not his first paramour, but none of his past mistresses have made him feel like this. Though he would like to maintain his distance—and composure—the allure of Lara is too strong for him to resist. Lara fails to realize the power she has over Komarovsky and is instead resigned to her place in their relationship, a secret she finds flattering and exciting even as it fills her with guilt.
Themes
Get the entire Doctor Zhivago LitChart as a printable PDF.
Lara’s romance is soon overshadowed by the escalating revolution. Revolutionaries seize and barricade her neighborhood. Two boys Lara knows, Nika Dudorov and Patulya Antipov, join the revolutionaries’ ranks. Convinced that the army is about to attack to push the revolutionaries out, Lara and her family flee to a nearby neighborhood; their dressmaking shop is already on strike. Falling asleep to the distant sound of gunfire, Lara prays for the revolutionaries.
Throughout the novel, the characters’ individual fates are interwoven with and influenced by historical changes. The Guichard family live in a workers’ neighborhood and are cut off from Komarovsky and other elites when the uprising begins. Though Lara is from a very different social background, her proximity to and familiarity with the working-class people who live around her makes her sympathetic to the revolution rather than the government. Lara’s prayers for the revolutionaries may seem ironic given the communist movement’s atheism and the Orthodox Church’s support for the Tsar, but this contradiction reflects the incoherent nature of both the 1905 Revolution and Lara’s still-developing worldview.
Themes
Meanwhile, Yuri’s life at the Gromekos is much more comfortable. His adoptive father, Alexander Alexandrovich, is a professor married to Anna Ivanovna, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist from the Urals. Nikolai Nikolaevich has been exiled, but Yuri is kept entertained by the Gromekos’ love of culture; Anna Ivanovna and her best friend, Shura Schlesinger, host classical concerts and literary salons.
With the Gromekos, Yuri finds the security and stability that his own family’s wealth was unable to provide, due to his parents’ dysfunctional marriage and premature deaths. The Gromekos are a typical example of the enlightened, progressive prerevolutionary Russian elite, intellectuals who support political reforms but are primarily concerned with their intellectual and cultural interests.
Themes
One night, the Gromekos’ maid interrupts one of these performances to say that one of the guests, a doctor, is urgently needed at a nearby hotel. Alexander Alexandrovich, Misha Gordon, and Yuri accompany the doctor. At the hotel they find that Madame Guichard has attempted suicide, much to the frustration of the staff. Yuri, struggling to understand what happened, is struck by brief glimpses of the imposing Komarovsky and the forlorn-looking Lara. As they leave, Misha explains to him that it was none other than Komarovsky who encouraged Yuri’s father to drink himself to death, but Yuri is too mesmerized by the sad, beautiful image of Lara to grasp what his friend is telling him.
Alexander Alexandrovich accompanies his doctor friend to the hotel and brings Yuri and Misha along as an excursion. For the boys this trip is a learning opportunity, as the dingy hotel in which Madame Guichard has attempted suicide reveals a radically different side to Russian society than the Gromekos’ rarified social circles. Yuri’s fascination with Lara is the first indication that destiny will reunite the two of them and foreshadows their future entanglement. Similarly, Yuri’s lack of interest in Misha’s revelation that Komarovsky is responsible for his father’s death prefigures his future lack of worldliness and pursuit of poetry, truth, and Lara’s love even at the cost of his honor—or his life.
Themes
