Doctor Zhivago |
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Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago is an immortal literary creation. Set in the background of the upheavals in the world political scene, Doctor Zhivago is a literary portrait of the tumultuous time, when the old social order was giving way to a new approach to the society.
Doctor Zhivago covers the revolutionary and post revolutionary Russia.
The 1905 Revolution, 1917 Revolution, Civil War of 1918-1921-22 and the Reign of Terror are all covered in this gigantic work. Boris Pasternak won a Nobel Prize for literature for Doctor Zhivago, but he did not go to the Swedish Academy to receive it.
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The characters and the subtleties of the plot of Doctor Zhivago cannot be explained in a few words. Zhivago is a man of medicine and poet rolled in one, but this is not to suggest that he did not have other interests in life. Apart from poetry and his profession Zhivago took keen interest in the social order of the country.
He married a young woman named Tonya, but sometime later married Larisa Foedorovna comes like a breath of fresh air in his life. When WWI hits Russia, Zhivago joins the army medical corps and under trying circumstances Lara (Larisa) becomes a military nurse. It was in the hospital where Tonya delivered her baby that she and Zhivago first met.
Doctor Zhivago is influenced by Bolshevism and since he was unable to gain confidence of his co-workers, he decides settle in the Urals with his family. While in the Urals, Zhivago again encounters Lara and this time there is no stopping of the passionate love affair that follows. Love for Doctor Zhivago was an emotional catharsis. His conviction in his social beliefs made him more of a brooder than an activist. One pertinent point that has to be mentioned here is that, through Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak has shown, social upheavals create upheavals in a person's life which are more destructive than the upheavals in society itself. To know more on this, please visit My Dear Valentine .
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