Neighbour Rosicky

"Sometimes the Doctor heard the gossipers in the drug-store wondering why Rosicky didn't get on faster. He was industrious, and so were his boys, but they were rather free and easy, weren't pushers, and they didn't always show good judgment. They were comfortable, they were out of debt, but they didn't get much ahead. Maybe, Doctor Burleigh reflected, people as generous and warm-hearted and affectionate as the Rosickys never got ahead much; maybe you couldn't enjoy your life and put it in the bank too." 

The tension between a profitable life and a worthwhile one is central to "Neighbour Rosicky." To a certain extent, Cather suggests the two are incompatible, not only because financial success so often comes at other people's expense, but also because it often involves self-deprivation. "Getting on," in other words, requires a person to compromise both his sense of morality and his sense of pleasure and beauty. Cather explores the relationship between these senses in more detail as the story goes on, but it is significant that she first raises the topic through Doctor Burleigh. Because he is the only major character not a part of the Rosicky family, “Doctor Ed" functions as something of an objective observer, and a stand-in for the reader; his conclusions about what has held the Rosickys back over the years therefore nudge readers towards a similar understanding.

"If Mary liked people at all, she felt physical pleasure in the sight of them, personal exultation in any good fortune that came to them." 

Much like her husband, Mary Rosicky is an especially warm and caring person; as this passage suggests, she not only behaves generously toward others, but also truly enjoys doing so. What's more, the fact that her enjoyment is "physical" is significant, because it points to the connection Cather establishes between sensory pleasures and humanity. Rather than conflicting with or distracting a person from moral behavior, bodily pleasure in "Neighbour Rosicky" forms a basis for compassion and kindness. Mary, for instance, not only experiences other people's happiness in her own body, but also demonstrates her love for them through very physical and concrete means.

"He often did overtime work and was paid well for it, but somehow he never saved anything. He couldn't refuse a loan to a friend, and he was self-indulgent. He liked a good dinner, and a little went for beer, a little for tobacco; a good deal went to the girls. He often stood through an opera on Saturday nights…Rosicky had a quick ear, and a childish love of all the stage splendor [sic]; the scenery, the costumes, the ballet." 

Rosicky himself does not sugarcoat the fact that he has often not handled his money wisely. In this passage, for instance, he remembers the many indulgences he used to spend money on while living in New York. What is striking, however, is that Cather does not condemn Rosicky for "wasting" money on purely physical pleasures; in fact, she places these pleasures alongside expenses that we typically think of as nobler or worthier (lending money to a friend and experiencing art). In other words, "Neighbour Rosicky" implies that there is a relationship between "simple" pleasures like food and drink and life's "higher" purposes, like kindness and generosity; perhaps the former paves the way for the latter, as suggested in the earlier passage about Mrs. Rosicky's delight in helping others. Regardless, the story defends Rosicky's desire to enjoy life and his fellow humans even if doing so sets him back financially. 

"The lower part of New York was empty. Wall Street, Liberty Street, Broadway, all empty. So much stone and asphalt with nothing going on, so many empty windows. The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops and the belts and bands cease running. It was too great a change, it took all the strength out of one. Those blank buildings, without the stream of life pouring through them, were like empty jails. It struck Rosicky that this was the trouble with big cities; they built you in from the earth itself, cemented you away from any contact with the ground. You lived in an unnatural world, like the fish in an aquarium, who were probably much more comfortable than they ever were in the sea." 

Although Rosicky appreciates the pleasures of life in the city, he ultimately decides that it is not possible to live a full life there. Later in the story, it emerges that this is in part a reflection of Rosicky's deep compassion for others, as well as his desire for independence. In this passage, however, Cather makes a more fundamental point about the way cities hinder life itself. As Rosicky remembers it, New York City is artificial and lifeless; he compares it, for instance, to a machine. Worse yet, it quite literally cuts its residents off from the living world of nature through paved streets and tall buildings. As a result, people may be "comfortable" in cities for a time (particularly when there are other people nearby), but they are nevertheless trapped in a kind of living death.

"Anton's mother died when he was little, and he was sent into the country to her parents. He stayed with them until he was twelve, and formed those ties with the earth and the farm animals and growing things which are never made at all unless they are made early." 

Rosicky's wish for his sons to become farmers may strike readers as surprising, given that he himself was the first in his family to own land. In a sense, however, farming does represent a form of family heritage for Rosicky, since some of his fondest memories of Czechoslovakia involve his time on his grandparents' (rented) farm. In other words, farming is one way for Rosicky to retain his ties to his native country, particularly because the region of America he has settled in is home to many other Czech immigrants. For Rosicky, then, Rudolph's ambivalence towards farming likely also feels like an ambivalence toward his cultural heritage. 

"[Rosicky] was a very simple man. He was like a tree that has not many roots, but one tap-root that goes deep down." 

Just as Cather uses personification to underscore the vitality of the natural world and its relationship to humanity, she here uses a comparison to the natural world to evoke Rosicky's "simple" goodness. In likening him to a tree with one root that "goes deep down," Cather suggests the basic, fundamental sources of Rosicky's morality: his kindness stems from his relationship to the earth, his physical enjoyment of life, and his sense of his heritage.

"Listen, boys; Polly ain't lookin' so good. I don't like to see nobody lookin' sad. It comes hard fur a town girl to be a farmer's wife. I don't want no trouble to start in Rudolph's family. When it starts, it ain't easy to stop. An American girl don't git used to our ways all at once. I like to tell Polly she and Rudolph can have the car every Saturday night till after New Year's, if it's all right with you boys." 

The main source of tension in "Neighbor Rosicky" is Rosicky's relationship to his oldest son, Rudolph, and Rudolph's new wife, Polly. Because Polly is American and used to life in town, Rosicky fears that she will draw Rudolph away from both his heritage and from farming. In this passage, however, it becomes clear that while Rosicky may have reservations about Rudolph's marriage, he does not bear Polly herself any ill-will. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to make her life more pleasant, not only in the hopes of helping Rudolph, but also because he can't stand to see her unhappy. This speaks to what Polly later calls Rosicky's "special gift for loving people."

"Polly was in a short-sleeved gingham dress, clearing away the supper dishes. She was a trim, slim little thing, with blue eyes and shingled yellow hair, and her eyebrows were reduced to a mere brush-stroke." 

Polly's physical appearance underscores the differences between her and the family she has married into. On a basic level, her plucked eyebrows and styled hair point to her background as a "town girl" with interests that are out of place on a farm. It is also significant, however, that Cather repeatedly associates Polly with thinness, describing her as "trim" and "slim" with narrow eyebrows. Anton and Mary Rosicky, by contrast, are heavier and fleshier people, which is important in a story that often associates physicality (e.g. physical appetites like hunger) with goodness. The implication is that Polly's slightness may mean she lacks the capacity to truly enjoy life, or to take pleasure in other people's enjoyment.

"Anton tramped the streets [of London] for several days, sleeping in doorways and on the Embankment, until he was in utter despair. He knew no English, and the sound of the strange language all about confused him. By chance he met a poor German tailor who had learned his trade in Vienna, and could speak a little Czech. This tailor, Lifschnitz, kept a repair shop in a Cheapside basement, underneath a cobbler. He didn't much need an apprentice, but he was sorry for the boy and took him in for no wages but his keep and what he could pick up." 

Unlike his memories of New York, Rosicky's memories of London are mostly negative: for Rosicky, it was a period of physical deprivation and, as this passage makes clear, loneliness. Nevertheless, his memories of Mr. and Mrs. Lifschnitz do provide a bit of warmth and happiness that illustrateRosicky's ability to find an upside to the worst situations. What's more, Lifschnitz's selfless generosity in hiring Rosicky as an apprentice provides a counterargument to the idea that city life uniformly "hardens" people (although the fact that Lifschnitz himself lives in poverty speaks to the consequences of remaining compassionate in a difficult and even cutthroat environment).

"But Rudolph was thinking that, all the same, the neighbours [sic] had managed to get ahead more, in the fifteen years since that time. There must be something wrong about his father's way of doing things. He wished he knew what was going on in the back of Polly's mind. He knew she liked his father, but he knew, too, that she was afraid of something. When his mother sent over coffee-cake or prune tarts or a loaf of fresh bread, Polly seemed to regard them with a certain suspicion. When she observed to him that his brothers had nice manners, her tone implied that it was remarkable they should have. With his mother she was stiff and on her guard. Mary's hearty frankness and gusts of good humour [sic] irritated her. Polly was afraid of being unusual or conspicuous in any way, of being 'ordinary,' as she said!" 

Rudolph's thoughts in this passage capture his conflicted position in the story. Unlike his father, Rudolph feels the pull of material and financial considerations; when he hears the story of how Rosicky made the best of a crop failure by having a picnic, he can't help but wonder whether the neighbors who rationed and saved didn't end up being in the right. The fact that Rudolph goes on to worry about what Polly is thinking strongly suggests that these reservations about "his father's way of doing things" stem from a wish to please his wife.He clearly realizes that Polly harbors some lingering prejudices against his family due to their ethnicity and occupation; he notes, for instance, that she seems surprised that his brothers are well-spoken and courteous. Within the context of "Neighbour Rosicky," however, the most troubling aspect of Polly's behavior is probably her "suspicion" of the baked goods Mrs. Rosicky sends her. Besides constituting a rejection of the Rosickys' culture, this also amounts to a rejection of their love, since we have already seen that the family demonstrates care and affection through items like food.

"He, too, in his time, had had to take money for repair work from the hand of a hungry child who let it go so wistfully; because it was money due his boss. And now, in all these years, he had never had to take a cent from anyone in bitter need,—never had to look at the face of a woman become like a wolf's from struggle and famine." 

One of Rosicky's central objections to life in the city is that it makes a certain degree of cruelty all but inevitable; just prior to this passage, for instance, Rosicky reflects on the way urban life "temper[s], harden[s], and sharpen[s]" people (Part VI, Paragraph 4). Here, it becomes clear that this is not simply a figure of speech, but rather a reality of the kinds of relationships that exist in the city. Because urban work mostly takes the form of wage-labor, and because the urban economy is so interconnected, it is impossible for even a decent man like Rosicky to avoid participating in the exploitation of others. With this in mind, Rosicky's appreciation of his independent lifestyle as a farmer takes on added significance; on his farm, Rosicky is free not only from the demands of an employer, but also from the moral compromises of life in the city. 

"The big alfalfa-field that lay between the home place and Rudolph's came up green, but Rosicky was worried because during that open windy winter a great many Russian thistle plants had blown in there and lodged…The boys were working so hard planting corn, their father felt he couldn't insist about the thistles, but he set great store by that big alfalfa field. It was a feed you could depend on,—and there was some deeper reason, vague, but strong. The peculiar green of that clove woke early memories in old Rosicky, went back to something in his childhood in the old world. When he was a little boy, he had played in fields of that strong blue-green colour [sic]."

In some ways, Rosicky's eagerness to preserve the family farm overlaps with his sense of identity as an immigrant. Although Rosicky's family were not farmers back in Europe, he spent much of his childhood in the Czech countryside, and the "strong blue-green colour" of the alfalfa provides a link back to those days. Meanwhile, the fact that the alfalfa's usefulness as a crop lies in its "reliability" rather than its profitability speaks once again to Rosicky's values: he prefers a modest but enjoyable existence to one spent trying to get ahead in the world.

"She had a sudden feeling that nobody in the world, not her mother, not Rudolph, or anyone, really loved her as much as old Rosicky did. It perplexed her. She sat frowning and trying to puzzle it out. It was as if Rosicky had a special gift for loving people, something that was like an ear for music or an eye for colour." 

Polly's realization that Rosicky has a "special gift for loving people" is likely the most explicit statement in the story as to what makes Rosicky unusual. It is not simply that Rosicky is kind or generous, but rather that he has an innate capacity for loving others. The comparison of this capacity to "an ear for music" and "an eye for colour" both underscores thelink between art and goodness in the story, and suggests that Rosicky's "gift" is a matter of being unusually attuned to what is loveable in other people. This becomes even clearer a few paragraphs later, when Rosicky senses that Polly has "a sweetness at her heart," despite her occasionally "foolish" exterior (Part VI, Paragraph 28).