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Part 2: A Girl from a Different Circle
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
Alexander Alexandrovich buys Anna Ivanovna an antique wardrobe. While trying to help their porter Markel assemble it, she falls and injures her back, setting of chain of health issues culminating in pneumonia. By 1911 Anna Ivanovna is bedridden. Yuri, Misha, and Tonya are all in their last year of university, studying medicine, philology, and law, respectively. Yuri chose medicine over the humanities, which he also loves, because he believes in practical, useful work. He writes poetry on the side, expressing his more esoteric interests in verse. Nikolai Nikolaevich, who now lives in Switzerland, has become a prominent advocate of socialist Christian mysticism. Nikolai Nikolaevich’s thinking influences Yuri and especially Misha, who to Yuri’s annoyance is increasingly more preoccupied with philosophy than empirical reality.
Anna Ivanovna’s fall offers another example of a seemingly insignificant event that sets off an important chain of events which may determine the fate of the characters involved—this moment will gain significance later. The narrative skips ahead from 1905 to 1911, a period of continuing social development but little outward political change. In late 1905 and early 1906 the Tsar successfully repressed the Revolution but made some political concessions, including the Duma, a mostly toothless parliament. While the Tsar attempted to reform the country without giving up power and the revolutionary movement went back underground or into exile, intellectuals and artists continued to experiment with new styles, mediums, and theories.
Themes
Anna Ivanovna sends for Yuri as her condition takes a turn for the worse. He attempts to comfort her with an elaborate lecture expressing his belief in resurrection. Moved by Yuri’s speech, Anna Ivanovna starts to recover. She frequently tells Yuri and Tonya about her childhood in the Urals. Yuri and Tonya begin to entire high society and attend balls and other nightlife. Yuri, on the cusp of adulthood, renounces his inheritance to the Zhivago fortune. Yuri’s father accumulated enough debts and had so many children—including Yuri’s half-brother, Evgraf—that any money Yuri would receive would go toward lawsuits to settle the will. Despite her apparent improvement, Anna Ivanovna’s coughing fits continue worsen. After one particularly bad episode she implores Yuri and Tonya to stay together after her death, urging them to marry each other.
Yuri’s lecture on resurrection is the first example of what will become his abiding philosophical and poetic interest in Christianity, inspired in part by his uncle. Anna Ivanovna’s childhood in the Urals—the same region that Lara is from—hints at the future importance of other locations in the narrative. Yuri’s relationship to his own class position is awkward and uncomfortable. Though he is uninterested in maintaining or accumulating wealth, he doesn’t feel any particular political disgust toward the Russian elite. For Yuri, his renouncement of the will is not a statement: it’s a recognition of the facts. Yuri and Tonya have a sibling-like relationship, but Anna Ivanovna’s request suggests the idea that it could development into something more.
Themes
In the spring of 1906 Lara decides her relationship with Komarovsky must end. During a thunderstorm at school she realizes the way out and asks her classmate Nadya Kologrivova to help her find work as a tutor so that she can live independently. Nadya invites her to tutor her sister instead, and so Lara moves in with the Kologrivovs, a kind and politically progressive family; Nadya’s father, Lavrenty Mikhailovich Kologrivov is a strong supporter of the workers’ movement despite his wealth. Four years later, in 1910, Lara’s brother Rodya visits her. Rodya, a military cadet, has gambled away money entrusted to him by his classmates. Komarovsky refused to help him but hinted that Lara might change his mind. Lara prepares to face him and even borrows Rodya’s revolver to bring with her, but Kologrivov generously offers to loan Lara the money instead.
Following the temporary reprieve of the 1905 Revolution, Lara slips back into normal life, including her increasingly torturous relationship with Komarovsky. Breaking out of this pattern requires radically remaking her own life, and she chooses the option most available to educated young women: teaching or tutoring for private, wealthy clients. The Kologrivovs, like the Gromekos, are enlightened members of the bourgeoisie interested in transforming Russia into a more equitable and democratic country, although Kologrivov is much wealthier than Yuri’s adopted parents. Lara’s generous nature and self-direction sharply contrasts with Rodya’s selfish and dissolute lifestyle. Lara’s willingness to sacrifice herself for others foreshadows future sacrifices and personal conflicts.
Themes
Lara, still living with the Kologrivovs, finishes her education. She and Pasha Antipov fall in love, and he starts university. Lara dreams of moving to a quieter city in the Urals and working as teachers. Lara feels increasingly guilty about the way the Kologrivovs support her financially, but they generously insist that she stay and continue to take a salary, though her tutoring services are no longer truly needed. Worried that she has no control over her own life, Lara comes to a decision: she will ask Komarovsky for money to live on her own. Once again packing the revolver, she sets off through the winter weather to visit Komarovsky, her dark thoughts at odds with the Christmas celebrations taking place around her. Komarovsky is at the Sventitskys’ Christmas party, but the agitated Lara is determined to speak to him immediately.
Rather than justice or revenge, Lara dreams of escape from the personal and social injustices that shape her life. The Urals and Siberia were vast, uncharted territories that offered ample land onto which Muscovites could project their hopes and dreams. Lara’s budding romance with Pasha is not enough to overcome the memory of Komarovsky, a formative experience that has instilled in her a deep sense of guilt and desire for independence. What Lara really wants—Komarovsky’s money or an excuse to exact her revenge—is left unclear, and she likely does not know herself.
Themes
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Passing by Pasha’s apartment on Kamergersky Lane, Lara breaks down. She enters in tears, worrying Pasha. Pasha, following Lara’s instructions, lights a candle by the frost-covered window. Lara rambles and cannot bring herself to tell Pasha the full truth, but she urges him to marry her immediately. Yuri and Tonya, also on their way to the Sventitskys’ party, pass by Pasha’s apartment. Yuri is struck by the image of the candle in the window—he too is preoccupied, both by his literary and scientific pursuits and by Anna Ivanovna’s failing health. Yuri finds that all of these ideas are connected, expressing the same mystical essence deep down.
Lara continues to wrestle with guilt and shame over memories of her relationship with Komarovsky, which prevents her from explaining the truth to Pasha. Yuri’s chance observation of the candle foreshadows his intertwined future with Lara, even if the workings of fate still seem like coincidence at this point in time. Yuri’s intellectual pursuit of the essence of life—in poetry, religion, or love—is his main quest in life, one he will continue to pursue through increasingly adverse circumstances.
Themes
The Sventitskys’ Christmas parties are renowned as raucous all-night affairs. The ballroom is buzzing with excitement, but Yuri and Tonya avoid it, preferring to spend the evening in the side rooms with the children and elderly guests. Lara also arrives, dressed improperly for a ball and eyeing Komarovsky, who is buy busy playing cards and ignores Lara completely. Lara recognizes one of his card partners as a prominent prosecutor responsible for repressing the railroad workers’ uprising in 1905. As the night drags on, Yuri still avoids dancing, though he is happy to watch Tonya dance. Their domestic intimacy slowly becomes romantic, which pleases and confuses them both. Suddenly, a gunshot disrupts Yuri’s thoughts—Lara, aiming for Komarovsky, shoots the prosecutor Kornakov instead. Luckily the bullet only grazes him, but while Yuri is bandaging the wound, he and Tonya learn that they are urgently needed at home.
Yuri and Tonya have similar dispositions: while neither of them are political radicals, they share a disdain for the excessive wealth and celebration of the elite, foreshadowing their compatibility as future husband and wife. Lara is more politically aware than either of them, as she notices the Tsarist prosecutor, but her failed murder of Komarovsky only appears from the outside as a failed political assassination. For her, too, personal animosity trumps political affiliation. Throughout the novel, fate does not just bring characters together: it also presents uncanny parallels between seemingly unrelated events, as the failed murder of Komarovsky takes place at the same time as the actual death of Anna Ivanovna.
Themes
Anna Ivanovna is already dead by the time Yuri and Tonya return. Tonya is distraught, while Yuri, long since accustomed to losing a parent, stoically supports her through her mourning. Yuri falls asleep in the library and almost misses Anna Ivanovna’s funeral procession, but Shura Schlesinger finds him just in time. Anna Ivanovna is buried in the same cemetery as Marya Nikolaevna was, and Yuri visits her grave for the first time in years. Yuri walks around the monastery and is moved to find it so similar yet changed, as the strong impression it made on him during the blizzard many years ago has become an almost fantastical memory.
The significant personal losses that occurred early in Yuri’s life instill in him a kind of emotional strength—or coldness—which insulates from the pain of later deaths. Yuri falling asleep in the library offers an ironic metaphor for the doctor’s life, as his poetic and philosophical interests absorb him to the detriment of his practical and worldly affairs. Yuri reflects on his formative experience at the monastery and how distant from it he is now.
Themes
