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Character Role Analysis

Misha Gordon

As young boys, Yuri Zhivago and Misha Gordon form a deep friendship because they're both deep, independent thinkers. As they grow older, though, Zhivago is disappointed to find that Gordon has totally drunk the Soviet Kool-Aid and is starting to talk about nothing other than how great the Revolution is.

Zhivago, on the other hand, thinks that it's important to always question your society's dominant values, whether they're capitalist or Communist or anything else.

Gordon's willingness to buy into society's values, though, also shows just how stubborn Zhivago can be when he's clinging to his independence. By the end of the book, Gordon doesn't even come across as that bad of a guy. The last time we see him, he's leaning over Zhivago's poetry and reading his old friend's deepest thoughts. So it looks like the two haven't grown as far apart as Zhivago might have thought while he was still alive. It's even possible that Misha kept up his independent thinking in secret; a lot of people did that in the Soviet Union.