Doctor Zhivago

The movie isn't much like the book

Having grown older, wiser and much more cynical: upon my most recent viewing of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago, I determined that Zhivago's relationship with Lara, apart from being a love story, was more than a little decadent. I began to consider why a novel that appeared to be mostly a historical romance set against the background of a very serious revolution had won a nobel prize; so I decided to read it. From the beginning, the story was quite different from the Lean production. There is no balalaika for instance. Despite Pasternak's real life training in classical music, music never features prominently in the novel. The structure is intriguing: Books one a two are subdivided into parts one through seventeen that run sequentially through both portions of the novel; the chapters of each part are numbered and often only or two pages very much like stanzas. Perhaps the original was in verse form. Right away there are unusual occurrences. The boy Yuri climbs on top of his mother's grave at the funeral and is described as looking like a wolf cub about to howl as he begins to cry. Wolves and dogs appear periodically throughout the novel having some connection to each other though maybe different roles. The natural world gets intensified blizzards, the movement of wheat in a field as well as the sound of a water fall take on a near life of their own. While not quite manifesting magical powers, these features of nature are much more than scenes of great beauty or terrifying vastness. The familiar storyline plays out with a whole array of characters not featured in the film. There are many discussions of politics. The uncle who was a former priest may represent the Tolstoyan perspective. There really isn't a quasi nemesis brother who is a Bolshevik. Instead there is a Jewish boy who is so taken with Orthodoxy he seems confused. The half-brother appears occasionally offering assistance whenever he can. Many themes emerge in the novel becoming much more pronounced in Book...