Doctor Zhivago

From a young age, Lara is an inquisitive and an ambitious person. Though she is not as wealthy or as privileged as Yuri, she shows a passion for learning and is described as an excellent student. Her lack of wealth motivates her to study hard, as only those with good grades are exempt from paying school fees. Lara's desire to learn is immediately confounded by her family's poverty, meaning that she must work extra hard to continue to pursue her interests. The circumstances of Lara’s life continue to hamper her ability to achieve her dreams. All her excellent work as a student is undermined by her relationship with Komarovsky. Since the death of her father, the lawyer Komarovsky has supported Lara’s family as a means of gaining access to Lara’s mother. Once Lara is 16, Komarovsky turns his attention to her. To support her family and to save them from poverty, she feels compelled to enter into a sexual relationship with the much older man. Lara's secret affair with Komarovsky is scandalous, not only for the imbalance of power and the absence of genuine consent. However, the relationship does intrigue Lara on some levels. She dislikes being seen as a naïve and innocent young girl, especially with the amount of responsibility and work she must endure on the behalf of others. She comes to view the affair as a means to an end, but this does not save her from being traumatized. When she finally escapes Komarovsky's clutches, her independence is confounded again when her brother builds up a massive gambling debt. Her experience with Komarovsky has left Lara unable to tolerate being in anyone’s debt, and when she is forced to borrow money to help her brother, the stress drives her to take drastic action. Driven to extremes by others, she is denied the opportunity to pursue a normal, independent life. Her obligations to her family and her loved ones continue to force her into impossible situations in which she must compromise her morals for the benefit of others.

After the revolution, Lara's life is caught between two different romances. She loves her husband Pasha, who abandons her to join the military, but she remains near him in secret for many years. At the same time, however, she begins a passionate affair with Yuri. Lara finds herself caught between these two men. Various reports of Pasha's death give her opportunities to abandon Pasha, even when she is already with Yuri, but she refuses to abandon him. She is invested in the sanctity of marriage, to the point where she implores Yuri to return to his wife even though she wants him to remain with her. When Yuri asks about her husband, she confesses that she loves Pasha more than Yuri. Their love is different, however. She feels a responsibility toward Pasha, as it was the secrets of her past that drove him to become Strelnikov. She does not love him in the passionate, burning way that she loves Yuri, much in the same way that Yuri loves Lara differently than he loves Tonya. Lara becomes capable of loving various people in various ways; her refusal to conform to social norms is an ironic reflection of the revolution, in which her polyamory is still considered taboo.

Ultimately, Lara loses both men. Pasha dies by suicide after learning that she still loves him. Yuri survives after sending Lara to safety with Komarovsky, and then he dies in Moscow. Fate allows Lara one last meeting with Yuri. She happens across his funeral, which is taking place in a house where she once lived. She is distraught but agrees to spend time compiling Yuri's writing. She learns that she inspired many of his poems, as he viewed her as an embodiment of beauty and good. Lara is arrested and thrown in a concentration camp shortly after. For all her beauty and her enduring love, she is killed off in a short sentence, showing that beauty struggles to endure in the post-revolutionary world.

Over the course of Doctor Zhivago, Pasha Antipov changes drastically. The juxtaposition between the youthful, naïve Pasha and the serious, battle-hardened Strelnikov is stark, illustrating the extent to which an upheaval like the Russian Revolution can change a person. At the beginning of the novel, Pasha is defined by his innocence. He is a young man who falls in love with Lara, who lives in the same building as he does. In his mind, his story is simple: he and Lara will fall in love, and they will be together forever. When Lara proposes to him, he is overjoyed. This joy is soured on the night of his wedding, however, when he learns about her affair with Komarovsky. The affair forces Pasha to understand the true cynicism and darkness of the world. His innocence cannot withstand this revelation, and after they have left Moscow, he begins to change. Pasha does not like rural life, but his distaste for the countryside belies a deeper dissatisfaction with the world. He manages his newfound cynicism by throwing himself into intellectual pursuits, teaching himself mathematics and mastering many subjects. Though he is married to a woman he loves, though he has a child, though they are seemingly isolated and safe from the violence elsewhere in the country, Pasha cannot be happy. His knowledge of Lara's past—and, by extension, of the true dark nature of the world—means that he needs to change something. Pasha decides that what needs to change is himself. He enlists in the military without asking Lara, abandoning the family and hurling himself headlong into a new life.

According to rumors, Pasha dies during a military excursion. In a sense, this is correct. The rumor of his death frees Pasha from his past. He is able to consign his old, innocent self to the grave and become someone else. He embraces this, being reborn as Strelnikov. Very quickly, Pasha develops a reputation as a cold, calculating, ruthless leader. The Pasha of the past could never have waged war in this manner, as he simply lacked cynicism and bitterness. Strelnikov does not care, for example, that men on both sides of the conflict have nicknamed him the Executioner. While Pasha was afraid of the cruel world Lara revealed to him, Strelnikov fears nothing. This reborn identity allows Pasha to become the man he feels can protect Lara and their child from the cruelty of the world. Lara is one of the few people who understands Pasha's journey. She accepts her role in his development, and she accepts that she may never see him again. Yuri also comes to understand Pasha, particularly after their final meeting. They talk through the night, bonding over their shared love of Lara. Pasha has spent years trying to turn himself into a person Lara can love or respect. He has tried to transform into an identity which reflects the world as she has shown it to him. Instead, he learns that Lara loves Yuri, a pure and artistic soul. Yuri more closely resembles Pasha than Strelnikov, and Pasha comes to realize that his transformation has made existence unbearable. He cannot abide living in this new, post-revolutionary world, which does not have a place for him, nor a place in which he can love Lara. In transforming himself to better reflect the world, Pasha has come to dislike himself and the world around him. His suicide reflects the impossible duality of his post-war existence: He cannot become Pasha again, and he has no desire to continue being Strelnikov.