Misha Gordon

Character Analysis

In the beginning sections of Doctor Zhivago, it seems like Misha Gordon's going to be a main character. It doesn't happen, though: the guy kind of fades to the margins of the book as the story unfolds.

We first get a glimpse of Misha while he's riding on a train and wondering why Russians seem to hate Jewish people so much: "For as long as he could remember, he had never ceased to marvel at how, with the same arms and legs and a common language and habits, one could be not like everyone else, and besides that, be someone who was liked by few, someone who was not loved" (1.7.7).

As you can tell from Misha's thoughts, he's a compassionate young man who's very good at thinking for himself. In his childhood confidence, he even thinks that one day, "when he grew up, he would untangle it all" (1.7.9). In other words, he thinks he'll figure out why the world works the way it does.

Unfortunately, the Bolshevik Revolution infects Misha's thinking to such a degree that the main character, Yuri Zhivago, loses faith in him as a friend. Zhivago feels that Misha has become worse off as he's grown into an adult, finding that "now [Misha] had come to dislike himself and had begun to introduce unfortunate corrections in his moral image. He bucked himself up, played the merry fellow, told stories all the time with a pretense to wit, and often said 'How entertaining' and 'How amusing'" (6.4.12).

To put it another way, Zhivago finds that Misha has become really flaky with age. Gordon remains Zhivago's best friend, but he never grows up to fulfill the promise that we saw in him when he was a young boy. Like many great young minds, he is ultimately ruined by the simplistic thinking of the Revolution and has stopped thinking for himself—at least according to Zhivago.

It's not totally clear how much Misha has stopped thinking. After all, during Soviet times, it was dangerous to say anything that didn't follow the Party line—even to your friends. At any moment, any of those friends could turn you in, and your entire family could be killed off for it without a second thought. These were scary, dangerous times.

Whether Misha has stopped thinking for himself, or whether he's just limiting himself to small talk on purpose, the point is that the Revolution has ruined what could have been a brilliant mind—just as it ruined Zhivago, and Lara, and the Gromekos, and on and on.