Yuri Zhivago (a.k.a. Yura, Yuri Andreevich, Yurochka) Timeline and Summary

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Yuri Zhivago (a.k.a. Yura, Yuri Andreevich, Yurochka) Timeline and Summary

  • We first meet Yuri Zhivago at his mother's funeral. The kid has already been deserted by his father, so his mother's death comes as a huge blow. After his mother's death, Yuri goes to live with his beloved uncle Nikolai.
  • Yuri grows up and becomes a doctor. When he's old enough, he leaves his uncle's care and goes to live with a Moscow family called the Gromekos. He bonds strongly with the Gromekos and eventually marries their daughter Tonya.
  • Zhivago and Tonya have a son together, but the night this son is born, Zhivago is called away to serve as a doctor for the Russian army in World War I.
  • While serving as a doctor, Zhivago meets a nurse named Lara Antipova and falls in love with her. Instead of acting on this love, though, he returns to his family in Moscow.
  • Because Russia is in the midst of a Revolution, it's become almost impossible to survive the winters in Moscow, so Zhivago and his family move to a village in the mountains. This just so happens to land him right back in the presence of Lara Antipova.
  • Zhivago starts an affair with Lara. But he soon feels guilty and plans on telling his wife Tonya all about it. He's kidnapped on his way home to tell her and spends the next three years as a doctor for a radical left-wing militia led by a guy named Liberius Mikulitsyn.
  • When he finally escapes the militia and hikes back to the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds that his family has been deported. Instead of going after them, he settles down to live with Lara.
  • Soon enough, it becomes known that the local authorities don't like Zhivago and Lara. The two lovers leave town to live in the woods in order to avoid capture.
  • Eventually, Komarovsky shows up and offers to get Lara and Zhivago to safety before the police catch them. Zhivago tricks Lara into going with Komarovsky while he stays behind and awaits his fate. With Lara gone, he hikes all the way back to Moscow and spends the last ten years of his life writing books. The books turn out to be pretty successful, but Zhivago stops taking care of himself and doesn't really get a chance to enjoy his success.
  • One day while traveling to a hospital job, Zhivago suffers heart failure on a streetcar and dies in the street. He leaves behind some old manuscripts of poems that his friends publish after his death.