Doctor Zhivago

Summary

Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, completed in the mid-1950s and first published in Italian translation by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in Milan in November 1957, after Soviet publishers rejected it. The English translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari appeared in 1958, the year Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. Yury Andreievich Zhivago, orphaned as a boy, is raised in Moscow by the cultivated Gromeko family, trains as a physician, writes poetry and marries Tonya Gromeko. Running through his story is that of Lara Guishar, the daughter of a widowed dressmaker, who as a schoolgirl is seduced by her mother's protector, the lawyer Komarovsky. Lara later fires a shot at him at a Christmas party, then marries the idealistic Pasha Antipov, who goes to war and is reported captured. Zhivago and Lara meet properly during the First World War, when he serves as an army doctor and she as a nurse. After the Revolution of 1917, famine and disorder in Moscow drive the Zhivago family to Varykino, a former estate in the Urals. In the nearby town of Yuriatin Zhivago finds Lara again and begins an affair with her. Captured by partisans who need a doctor, he is held for about two years in the forests of Siberia during the Civil War. When he escapes and returns, he learns that Tonya and her family have gone back to Moscow and will be deported abroad. He and Lara spend a final winter at Varykino until Komarovsky persuades Zhivago to let her leave with him for the Far East. Pasha, who has become the feared Red commander Strelnikov, arrives at Varykino as a fugitive and shoots himself. Back in Moscow, Zhivago lives in poverty with a new companion, Marina, writes, and dies of a heart attack in 1929. Lara attends his funeral and then disappears. In an epilogue set during the Second World War, his friends learn of a laundry girl, Tanya, apparently the daughter of Zhivago and Lara. The book closes with twenty-five poems attributed to Zhivago. The novel's portrayal of the Revolution as a catastrophe for individual lives, its Christian imagery and its lyricism made it a cause célèbre during the Cold War. David Lean's 1965 film made its story widely known.

Top Lessons

• The individual and history

  The novel follows private lives swept up in war and revolution. Readers can consider how Pasternak weighs personal life against political movements.

• Poetry within the novel

  Zhivago's poems close the book and reinterpret its events. Students can examine how the poems relate to the narrative.

• Love and responsibility

  Zhivago loves both Tonya and Lara. The novel presents his divided loyalties without simple judgment.

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