Neighbour Rosicky Willa Cather 1928

Neighbour Rosicky

Willa Cather 1928

“Neighbour Rosicky,” written in 1928 and collected in the volume Obscure Destinies in 1932, is generally considered one of Willa Cather’s most successful short stories. In it, she returns to the subject matter that informed her most important novels: the immigrant experience on the Nebraska prairie. Unlike My Antonia and O Pioneers!, two novels which compellingly explore the frontier experiences of young and vigorous immigrant women, “Neighbour Rosicky” is a character study of Anton Rosicky, a man who, facing the approach of death, reflects on the meaning and value of his life. In tracing Rosicky’s journey from Bohemia to Nebraska, Cather explores the intimate relationship between people and the places they inhabit. Though the story considers the pain of separations, “Neighbour Rosicky” also celebrates the small triumphs of life. Written not long after the death of her father, the story reflects a new maturity in Cather’s treatment of loss. Critics often remark on the story’s graceful acceptance of death’s inevitability. Like many of the novels and stories that Cather wrote in the decades after World War I, “Neighbour Rosicky” also criticizes the unthinking materialism that marked the 1920s. Though some early critics found her approach sentimental, critics in later decades tended to applaud Cather’s portrait of an immigrant farmer whose honesty, integrity, and emotional depth help him achieve a meaningful and happy life for himself and for his family.

Author Biography

Willa Cather was born in 1873 in Virginia, where her family lived in a small farming community. In 1884 her father, Charles Cather, decided to join his parents on the Nebraska Divide. The family lived for a year and half on the prairie among settlers from Bohemia, Scandinavia, France, Russia, Germany, and Denmark. Settler life on the Nebraska prairie would figure prominently in much of her writing, including two of her best-known novels, O Pioneers! (1913) and My Antonia (1918), as well as the story “Neighbour Rosicky” (1928). However, Charles Cather did not share his family’s fondness for working the land and soon moved them to a nearby town of Red Cloud, Nebraska. There he worked in a real estate and loan office. Though comfortable, the family never grew prosperous. Cather later described her father as a “Virginian and a gentleman and for that reason he was fleeced on every side and taken in on every hand.”

While in Red Cloud, Cather studied medicine and put on amateur theatricals until, with the full support of her father, she entered the University of Nebraska in 1891. There she began to write short stories for the first time and wrote articles and reviews for the Nebraska State Journal. These experiences led to her first job as a writer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh, where part of “Paul’s Case” is set, Cather edited a woman’s magazine called Home Monthly and taught high school English and Latin. She lived and traveled with her friend Isabelle McClung. In 1905 she published her first book of short stories, The Troll Garden, which included “Paul’s Case.” A year later she went to New York City to become managing editor for McClure‘s magazine. She worked in New York until 1912, when she retired on the advice of her friend and fellow writer Sarah Orne Jewett, who encouraged Cather to “find [her] own quiet centre of life.”

From 1912 until her death in 1947, Cather wrote a number of successful novels, including O Pioneers!, My Antonia,and One of Ours, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. She was also a prolific writer of short stories; afterThe Troll Garden, she published three more volumes of stories: Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920), Obscure Destinies (1932), in which “Neighbour Rosicky” appears, and The Old Beauty, and Others (1948). Like many of her contemporaries, Cather became disillusioned with social and political institutions after the First World War. An attitude of hopelessness often permeates her novels and stories, particularly after 1922. Critics have suggested that her turn toward historical subjects—nineteenth-century New Mexico in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and seventeenth-century Quebec in Shadows on the Rock (1931)—reflects a growing need to retreat from contemporary life.

Plot Summary

I

“Neighbour Rosicky” begins at the office of Dr. Ed Burleigh where Anton Rosicky learns that he has a bad heart. Readers also learn that Rosicky, a farmer on the Nebraska prairie, is a native of Bohemia, a region in what is today Slovakia. He is sixty-five and has a wife and six children as well as an “American” daughter-in-law. The doctor urges Rosicky to cease doing heavy farming chores.

After Rosicky leaves his office, Dr. Burleigh remembers how he breakfasted at the Rosicky farm the previous winter after delivering a baby for a rich neighbor. His warm welcome there causes Burleigh to reflect that good people such as the Rosickys never seem to get ahead; but he concludes that perhaps they enjoyed their life all the more.

II

As Rosicky leaves the doctor’s office, he starts home but pauses by the “snug and homelike” graveyard that lies on the edge of his hayfield. It is snowing, and Rosicky remembers that winter means rest for the fields, the animals, and the farmers.

When he reaches home, Rosicky tells Mary that his heart “ain’t so young.” Mary recalls that Rosicky has never treated her harshly in all their years of marriage, which has been successful because they both value the same things. The section ends with a story about how they refused to sell their cream when approached by a creamery company, preferring to give the cream to their own children instead of someone else’s.

III

In section III, Rosicky has taken the doctor’s advice to relinquish the heavy chores to his sons. He spends his time in his “corner” patching his sons’ clothes and reminiscing. He remembers his first days in New York City, when he came to America at the age of 20 and worked in a tailor shop. In the evening he went to school to learn English. His wages were adequate, but he never saved any money and instead loaned it to friends, went to the opera, or spent it on “the girls.” Soon, however, Rosicky became restless. On the Fourth of July, Rosicky “found out what was the matter with him.” He realized that, in the city, he was living in an unnatural world without any contact with earthly things. He began to think about going west to farm. He left New York when he was thirty-five to start a new life in Nebraska.

IV

Rosicky is worried about his son Rudolph, who rents a farm not too far from Rosicky’s. Rudolph has recently married Polly, a woman from town whom the Rosickys describe as “American,” meaning her parents are not recent immigrants. Polly has found the transition from being a single woman living in town to married life on a farm difficult. Because Rosicky is afraid that Polly’s unhappiness will prompt Rudy to abandon the farm for a job in the city, Rosicky decides to loan his son the family car, suggesting that he and Polly go into town that evening. The section ends when, on his way home, Rosicky stops to look at “the sleeping fields” and “the noble darkness.”

V

It is the day before Christmas and Rosicky, sitting by the window sewing, is reminded of his difficult years in London when he was always dirty and hungry. That evening, Rudolph worries about trouble ahead if the winter is too harsh for the crops. Mary responds by telling the story of how, one Fourth of July, the heat and wind destroyed their crops. Instead of despairing, Mary explained, Rosicky decided to have a picnic in the orchard. The storytelling continues when Rosicky describes one particular Christmas in London when he discovered a roasted goose that his poor landlady had prepared for the next day’s meal and hidden in his corner of the room. Before he realized what he had done, Rosicky had devoured half of the goose. Horrified, he wandered the city in despair before meeting some wealthy Czechs who generously gave him money to replace the goose. Shortly after this incident, Rosicky left for New York. Polly is moved by

this story and tells Rudy she wants to invite his family to their farm for New Year’s dinner.

VI

In the final section of the story, Rosicky reflects on the future of his children. He hopes that they don’t suffer “any great unkindness[es].” When spring comes, Rosicky decides to pull thistles from Rudolph’s alfalfa field while his sons tend the wheat. The heavy labor causes another heart attack and Polly, calling him “Father” for the first time, comes to his aid. While she nurses him, Rosicky subtly asks Polly if she is pregnant. She suddenly feels that no one had ever loved her as deeply as Rosicky. Rudolph and Polly take Rosicky home, where he dies the next morning.

The story concludes when Dr. Burleigh, driving to the Rosicky farm one evening, stops by the graveyard where Rosicky is buried:

For the first time it struck Doctor Ed that this was really a beautiful graveyard. He thought of city cemeteries; acres of shrubbery and heavy stone, so arranged and lonely and unlike anything in the living world. Cities of the dead, indeed; cities of the forgotten, of the “put away.” But this was open and free, this little square of long grass which the wind for ever stirred. Nothing but the sky overhead, and the manycolored fields running on until they met the sky. The horses worked here in summer; the neighbours passed on their way to town; and over yonder, in the cornfield, Rosicky’s own cattle would be eating fodder as winter came on. Nothing could be more undeath-like than this place; nothing could be more right for a man who had helped to do the work of great cities and had always longed for the open country and had got to it at last. Rosicky’s life seemed to him complete and beautiful. (Excerpt from “Neighbour Rosicky”)

Characters

Dr. Ed Burleigh

Dr. Burleigh is an unmarried doctor in the small farming community where the Rosickys live. A young man, but “solemn” and already getting gray hairs, Dr. Burleigh provides the reader with the initial view of Rosicky as a happy and untroubled man. This view is deepened and qualified as the story progresses. Cather uses Burleigh to provide a frame for the story. Just as he introduces readers to Rosicky, Burleigh also provides a way for readers to say farewell to him, when, at the end of the story, Dr. Burleigh stops by the graveyard where Rosicky is buried and thinks once again about his neighbor.

Lifschnitz

Lifschnitz is the poor German tailor for whom Rosicky worked in London. He spoke a little Czech, so when he and Rosicky met by chance, he discovered how poor the young man’s circumstances were and took him into his home and shop. Lifschnitz lived with his wife and five children in a small three-room apartment and rented out a corner of the living room to another waif, who was studying violin.

Miss Pearl

Miss Pearl is a young town woman who works as a clerk at the general store. Rosicky waits for her to be free to wait on him; she knows “the old fellow admired her, and she liked to chaff with him.” The story gives two clues that she is conscious of style: she plucks her eyebrows, and she interprets Rosicky’s remark about not caring much for “slim women like what de style is now” as aimed at her.

Anton Rosicky

Anton Rosicky, the protagonist of the story, came to Nebraska to work as a farmer. Originally from Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, he experienced country life as a boy when he went to live on his grandparents’ farm after his mother died. At eighteen he moved to London, where he worked for a poor German tailor for two years. At twenty he made his way to New York, again working as a tailor until at thirty-five he decided he needed to get out into the country and work on the land. Having saved enough money to buy his own farm, he has lived happily, if modestly, on his farm with his wife and six children.

The story begins when sixty-five-year-old Rosicky learns from his doctor that he has a bad heart. This news causes him to reflect on his life and the choices he has made. As the story reveals more about Rosicky and what he values, it becomes apparent that Rosicky’s heart is anything but bad. Rather, Rosicky embodies the ideal of the good man. He works hard but still finds the time to enjoy life’s pleasures, including his pipe and coffee. More importantly, he is emotionally astute and is able to touch people profoundly. Cather is careful to point out that Rosicky’s qualities have not prevented him from making mistakes, but his generosity makes him wholly capable of redressing those wrongs. After his death, Rosicky, who is buried in a small graveyard near the farm, remains connected to both the human community and the natural world.

John Rosicky

John, Rosicky’s youngest son, is about twelve years old. He takes care of the horses after his father returns from town.

Josephine Rosicky

Josephine is Rosicky’s youngest child and only daughter. It is she who sets an extra place for Dr. Burleigh at the breakfast table when he stops in after a house call.

Mary Rosicky

Mary is Anton Rosicky’s wife; she is fifteen years younger than her husband. Also from Czechoslovakia, Mary exhibits a warm generosity and exuberant enjoyment of simple pleasures. The narrator comments that “[w]ith Mary, to feed creatures was the natural expression of affection.” Her nurturing gift is also apparent in her house plants—Dr. Burleigh marvels that her geraniums bloom all year. She is the natural complement to Rosicky: “she was rough, and he was gentle”; he is from the city, and she is from the country. Their marriage succeeds because “they had the same ideas about life.”

Polly Rosicky

Polly, one of four daughters of a widow, is the wife of Rosicky’s son Rudolph. She is thin, blonde, and blue-eyed, and she “got some style, too,” as Rosicky notes. Unlike her husband, to whom she has been married less than a year, Polly grew up in town and is not the child of immigrants. These differences make her feel somewhat awkward around Rudy’s family—she calls her father-in-law “Mr. Rosicky” and is “stiff and on her guard” with Mary, whose occasional gifts of bread or sweets she is not quite comfortable receiving. Rosicky notes that “an American girl don’t git used to our ways all at once.” Polly sometimes feels lonely living in such an isolated area. Once a store clerk, she misses the social contacts she had at her job and in her church choir, and she is touched by Rosicky’s kindness toward her. When Rosicky has a heart attack after raking thistles in the hayfield, it is Polly who nurses him through it. This is the first time in the story that she calls him “Father,” and he is the first person she allows to know of her pregnancy. Afterward, while he is sleeping, it strikes her that “nobody in the world . . . really loved her as much as old Rosicky did.”

Rudolph Rosicky

Rudolph is Rosicky’s oldest son and Polly’s husband. About twenty years old, he is described as a “serious sort of chap” and a “simple, modest boy,” but “proud.” Although he and Polly were just married in the spring, he “had more than once been sorry he’d married this year.” This statement of regret comes immediately after a reference to the crop failure of the past year, but other references indicate there is also trouble with his marriage itself. Both Rosicky and his wife are afraid that Polly will grow too discontented with farm life and that her discontent will spread to Rudolph or start trouble