Where It All Goes Down
Russia, in All Its Glory
Throughout this book, Pasternak has a bit of a love affair with his home country of Russia, regardless of how much he disagrees with what the Bolshevik Revolution has done to it. In fact, he constantly uses personification to represent Russia itself as though it were a character in the book.
This personification also gives us a lot of insight into the way that nature is something that's totally alive for little Yuri Zhivago. As the narrator notes in the case of a snowstorm, "One might have thought the storm noticed Yura and, knowing how frightening it was, reveled in the impression it made on him" (1.2.4).
Later on in Part 1, Pasternak continues with this technique of treating nature as if it's a living thing. When describing a hot day, he writes that "[even] the sun, which also seemed like a local accessory, shone upon the scene by the rails with an evening shyness, approaching it as if timorously, as a cow from the herd grazing nearby" (1.7.20). The Russian land is not the same thing as the Russian (or Soviet) state; it's possible to love the land but not the politics.
(Sound familiar? It's a pretty common theme in literature, and in our daily lives.)
So Pasternak shows us that no matter what happens to his home country politically, he'll always find it physically beautiful and always treat it as though it were a type of companion that he'll stick with through thick and thin.
Ain't that nice?