The transformation of reality as the inner plot of “Doctor Zhivago”

Transformation of reality was always the main subject of B. Pasternak's creative work. It is also the main theme of the novel “Doctor Zhivago”. As in the early writer's prose, the novel has two plots, “outer” and “inner”. The outer action is the description of Yuri Zhivago's life and the life of several characters connected with him. The major event in the inner and main action is transformation of the Russian reality whose manifestations were historical peripeteia of the first half of the 20 th century. The construction of the outer plot includes a lot of fabula clichés characteristic of the adventure narration and partly fairy-tale: the hero kidnapped by robbers, pretended death, etc. The constructive devices are united by the principle of counterpoint that is characteristic of architectonics of a musical piece and extrapolates over both the thematic and stylistic organization of the text. The seemingly chaotic character of the outer action makes us think of its conventionality that points at the second, inner action whose subject and hero is the reality itself. Such inner action was present in Pasternak's long short stories “The Mark of Apelles”, “The Childhood of Luvers”, “Air Ways”, and transformation of reality in the latter was directly connected to the revolution forestalling the interpretation of this theme in “Doctor Zhivago”. The inner plot renders the sequence of transformations happening to reality: a kind of static “mode”, revolutionary impulse towards change, exposal of “content” of reality, and “faceting” of the new image of the world (terminology taken from B. Pasternak's early essays). The two plots of “Doctor Zhivago” are based on archetypic models of the plot prototype that are profoundly interconnected: the outer one is based on the “liminal” scheme of the hero who undergoes a trial of confronting death, the inner one on the “cyclic” scheme of the initiation.