Lara’s Attempt to Shoot Komarovsky

Lara’s Attempt to Shoot Komarovsky is the violent culmination of Lara’s effort to break free from dependence on the Kologrivovs and from her painful entanglement with Komarovsky. On the night of December 27, she sets out with Rodia’s loaded revolver hidden in her muff, prepared to shoot Komarovsky if he refuses the money she believes he owes her. At the Christmas gathering, the shot hits Kornakov rather than its intended target. The episode makes Lara’s desperation public, and reunites her with Yura in circumstances he initially misunderstands.

Causes and Decision

By Christmastime in 1911, Lara feels that everything in her life has become unbearable: Pasha, Lipa, the Kologrivovs, and money whirl through her thoughts as she grows disgusted with life and longs to break with everything she has known. Her choice to leave the Kologrivovs is also a bid for independence. She decides that Komarovsky must provide the money, reasoning that their past and the years of independence she has achieved entitle her to help without explanations or humiliating conditions.

The decision is not simply a request for assistance. Lara intends to shoot Komarovsky if he refuses or humiliates her. She takes Rodia’s revolver, loaded and with its safety catch off, concealed inside her muff, and walks through the festive streets in a state of intense agitation. The narrative presents the shot as already sounding inwardly before she reaches Petrovka Street: her imagined violence has become entangled with anger at Komarovsky, herself, and her fate. The plan is thus both targeted and diffuse, a desperate attempt to make one decisive act answer a wider accumulation of distress.

At the Christmas Gathering

At the gathering, Lara is an outsider. She is not dressed for the evening and knows no one, yet stays in the ballroom, dancing with Koka Kornakov as if sleepwalking and wandering without purpose. Several times she pauses outside the sitting room, hoping Komarovsky will notice her. He sits with his cards held up before his face and does not look toward her. Whether he fails to see her or chooses not to acknowledge her, Lara experiences the silence as mortifying.

When an unfamiliar young woman enters the sitting room, Komarovsky gives her the look Lara remembers from their liaison. Lara takes the scene as a mirror of her own history and thinks she is watching a new victim. Her suspicion proves mistaken: she later learns the woman is Kornakov’s daughter, not another target of Komarovsky’s predation. The brief misreading sharpens the scene’s tension. Lara’s past governs what she sees, while the gathering’s social arrangements remain largely unknown to her.

She does not abandon her intention to speak with Komarovsky, but postpones it until a more convenient moment and forces herself back into the ballroom. As she passes Yura, she presses his hand and leaves her handkerchief with him. He responds to its scent and intimacy before the shot interrupts the encounter. The gesture creates a fleeting private connection inside the crowded celebration, immediately overtaken by the public violence Lara has carried into the room.

The Shot and Its Immediate Consequences

A shot rings out from the sitting room, and the gathering breaks into confusion. Komarovsky repeatedly asks what Lara has done. Mrs. Kornakov screams for help and initially fears for Boria; the crowd then pours into the ballroom. Kornakov emerges laughing and dabbing a napkin at a scratch on his left hand. Lara is led by the arms by another group, and the intended assault has resulted in a minor wound to someone other than Komarovsky.

Yura recognizes Komarovsky as the prominent lawyer connected with his father’s estate, but he and Komarovsky both pretend not to know one another. Seeing Lara brought out, Yura first assumes that she has shot at the prosecutor for political reasons. He pities her and notices the roughness with which those holding her twist her arms, imagining that she is being treated like a common thief. He then realizes that Lara’s legs have given way and that she is being supported rather than marched away under her own strength.

Yura approaches the wounded Kornakov as a doctor. He examines the left hand, judges the scratch too slight to require a bandage, and suggests iodine. His choice to tend first to the apparent victim briefly delays his impulse to go to Lara. Before anything further can happen, Felitsata Semionovna and Tonia tell him to leave and get his coat: a message has come from home, and they must return at once. Imagining the worst, Yura runs for his things, while Lara’s crisis is left suspended amid the alarm.

Significance

The episode’s central reversal is stark: Lara carries a weapon and a fixed intention to confront Komarovsky, yet the shot wounds Kornakov, while Komarovsky’s response is expressed as despair rather than injury. The act does not deliver the clean break or independence Lara sought. Instead, it exposes her to public scrutiny and physical handling, and makes her private history visible to strangers gathered for a celebration.

The narrative also sets Lara’s isolation against Yura’s partial recognition. He identifies Komarovsky and feels protective toward Lara, but initially misreads the reason for the shooting; even his knowledge of the people present is incomplete. The handkerchief passed between them offers a moment of closeness, but the shot and the urgent message from home cut it short. The scene therefore joins Lara’s attempt to reclaim agency to an encounter in which intention, consequence, and understanding fail to align.