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Part 5
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Neighbour Rosicky, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Good Life
The City vs. The Country
Family, Community, and Kindness
Money vs. Happiness
Summary
Analysis
The winter is a difficult one for the crops, but Rosicky does not worry for himself or his family—he knows that they’ll get through the hard times, just as they have before. Instead, he worries for his children, especially newlywed Rudolph. Still, Rosicky wishes more than anything that his children will stay farmers. In his opinion, it is far harder to be an employee than to have the privilege of working for yourself.
Having suffered and seen the worst of life in his youth in London, Rosicky does not fear life—age and life experience have taught him that he can get through anything. Any concern he has, then, is selfless. He worries not about himself, but instead about whether or not his children with take after him and stay farmers, continuing to live on the land that he cultivated for their family. This line of thinking also indicates Rosicky’s growing acceptance of his aging—he knows that he is reaching the end of his life, and now he mostly thinks about what he will leave behind.
Active
Themes
Rosicky thinks about the difference in people in the city and country—in the former, he often found people to be untrustworthy, competitive, and money-hungry. In the city, if you don’t get along with someone, there’s no space to be apart from them. Rosicky hopes that his sons will keep living in the country, where he believes they will not see other people’s cruelty. Rosicky feels grateful for his rural life, where he has not had to cheat or swindle his way into money—all his income has come from his own hard work, and he feels glad for his close proximity to nature.
Rosicky only wants to earn money in a way that feels honest and not hurtful to other people, and it’s important to him to pass down this value to his children. Money means nothing to him if it comes at the cost of his independence and his access to nature, or if it comes from manipulating other people.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
That spring, Rosicky starts doing physical labor again, wanting to rake out some Russian thistles that may disrupt the alfalfa crop. He goes to Rudolph’s one morning (when Doctor Burleigh happens to be out of town) to rake, and he gets short of breath. While he is running out of breath, he stumbles as he tries to get the horses into their stalls. His chest cramps, and he nearly collapses.
Active
Themes
Polly runs to Rosicky just in time and catches his shoulder. She calls him “Father” and asks her to lean on him, so that she can walk him back into the house. Polly cares for him while he continues to writhe in pain, putting hot bath towels on him for an hour until he feels better. Even after, Polly continues to dote on him, calling him “Father” and saying that it “broke [her] heart to see [him] suffer.”
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
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Rosicky confesses to Polly that he may die soon and thanks her for caring for him. He tells her that he hopes to live to see her and Rudolph have a child together and rests his eyes. Polly suddenly decides that no one has ever loved her as much as Rosicky does, believing that he has a unique ability to love people. She stares at his hands and admires how well-worn they look, without appearing aged and hard the way most farmers’ hands do. Rosicky’s hands somehow convey “cleverness” and “generosity,” and Polly feels that she has learned something important about life just by looking at his hands. Shortly after, Rudolph arrives home, and Polly tells him about his father’s near-death experience.
The next day, Rosicky returns to his home to have breakfast with his family. While his family worries about him, Rosicky thinks fondly of Polly and is grateful to know what a “tender heart” she has, having seen how she cared for him when he was sick. As he smokes his pipe and stitches overalls for his son, his chest starts to cramp again. He gets up to walk to his bed but collapses at the door. By the time Mary finds him, he has died.
Several weeks after Rosicky’s death, Doctor Burleigh still regrets not being there. He drives to see the family and stops at the graveyard, realizing that Rosicky is now one of the bodies resting there. Burleigh is struck by the natural beauty of the graveyard, and of how it contrasts with the enclosed, oppressive design of graveyards in cities. In the country, even the graveyard as an aura of freedom, and Burleigh thinks to himself that the land is, ironically, “undeathlike.” He decides it is a fitting resting place for Rosicky, whose life seems “complete and beautiful.”
