Doctor Zhivago

In Doctor Zhivago, trains are a common sight. On many occasions, Yuri (and occasionally his family) must take a train from one part of Russia to another. The sheer magnitude of their journey is epic, passing across giant swathes of land that they glimpse from the inside of the carriages. Added to the geographic immensity of the train journeys, the number of passengers involved also represents the scale of the social upheaval caused by the revolution. Every train car is packed with people and each carriage is outfitted based on the needs of the revolutionary or government authorities, whether that is military force or labor. Passengers, meanwhile, are stuffed into the rear cabins as they are deemed unimportant. The scale of the train journeys in the novel represents the geographical enormity of the Russian state (speaking to why the upheaval of the revolution is so historic) and the mass movement of people that the revolution causes. The entire society shifts along historic and geographic lines, and these lines are represented by the trains, which hurtle constantly from the past into the future along the tracks, taking all of Russia and Russian society with them.

As well as the enormity of Russia, the trains also symbolize the interconnectedness of the state.