Neighbor Rosicky | Cather’s Complex Tale of a Simple Man, ‘Neighbour Rosicky'
In the following excerpt, originally presented at
the Brigham Young University’s Willa Cather Symposium
in September 1988, Skaggs offers an interpretation
of Cather’s ‘‘Neighbour Rosicky’’ and
praises Cather’s ‘‘courage to affirm a new route to
. . . the American dream of success.’’
In ‘‘Neighbour Rosicky,’’ one of her best short fictions, Willa Cather characteristically manages to establish plot, character, and theme in the compact scope of her opening sentence. The sentence reads, ‘‘When Doctor Burleigh told neighbour Rosicky he had a bad heart, Rosicky protested.’’ We learn here that the story’s central concern is a bad heart, that the heart belongs to a man named Rosicky whose neighborliness defines him, and that Rosicky protests the diagnosis, thereby providing an action for the narrative. The story, we are forewarned, will reveal how Rosicky...
[The entire page is 2555 words long]
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