“Neighbour Rosicky” narrates Anton Rosicky’s journey from living a difficult life in various cities to finding beauty and fulfillment as a farmer in rural Nebraska. Overall, the story depicts urban life—particularly for poor and working-class people—as unforgiving. City dwellers are mostly cruel and crooked, the work is hard, the environment is alienating, and there are few opportunities for freedom or joy. By contrast, the story depicts rural life as full of beauty, self-reliance, kindness, and small pleasures. The story is careful not to imply that the city is entirely bad and that the country is entirely good—Rosicky does enjoy various aspects of New York City, and his rural life comes with all kinds of hardships, from crop failure to backbreaking work. Nevertheless, the story does suggest that rural places give people the best chance to live free and fulfilling lives.
Rosicky’s memories of living in New York and London depict city life as mostly unforgiving. When Rosicky lives in London, he is impoverished and alone, separated by a language barrier and incapable of finding real connection with other people. Even his boss in London, a German tailor, is poor. The city’s conditions and job market are so difficult that everyone struggles to survive. Rosicky thinks back on living in London as a time when he was cold, hungry, and without resources or basic living necessities, like food and clean clothes.
In addition, the people in cities seem cruel and hard to Rosicky—most city-dwellers he encounters are mean. And because cities are so crowded, Rosicky cannot avoid this meanness. The design of cities, too, is unappealing to Rosicky, even without the hordes of people typically filling the streets. When he walks through an empty New York on the Fourth of July, sees the city streets, architecture, and industrial machinery on its own and finds it “unnatural,” like “empty jails.” The city seems grotesque and suffocating, even without people in it.
Rosicky is, however, temporarily happy living in New York, where he learns English, makes friends, enjoys the attractions of the city, and has enough money to live a relatively comfortable life. But after living in the city for five years, he develops a drinking problem and grows “restless.” Rosicky’s restlessness is linked to the seasons changing, as it becomes springtime in New York. He finds springtime incompatible with the harshness of the city, and it makes him eager to get away to somewhere else.
In contrast to the unrewarding hardships of city life, the story paints country life as being meaningful and fulfilling. Rosicky first wants to move to the country from the city because he believes that living on his own land will make him happier than being a tenant. He turns out to be correct in this assumption and tries to pass this value down to his children—he finds a sense of liberty from knowing that his farmland is his own, and that he is not at the mercy of a boss or landlord.
Additionally, Rosicky finds the work he does on the farm meaningful. He likes cultivating his own land and getting to do physical labor that benefits others—and he also likes being able to determine his own schedule, to feel like his personhood is not ruled by his labor. Along with that, Rosicky finds that working on the farm gives him a closer connection to nature than he had living in cities, and he finds the proximity to nature itself to be beautiful and rewarding. But rural life is also difficult and at times uncontrollable—Rosicky and his son Rudolph both struggle financially when there is crop failure or when winter comes. Even so, Rosicky often chooses to see these moments as a reason to be grateful for extra rest and leisure. For Rosicky, the worst parts of a country life are still better than the best parts of a city life.
In the story, the city and the country are not just different locations—they represent entirely different beliefs about life. For Rosicky, the city signifies ambition without real hope, a fruitless struggle for economic advancement that strips a person of their ability to live as they choose. The city is, for Rosicky, a place without real humanity or connection to the rest of the world. In the country, he must physically labor, and his income largely depends on factors outside his control, like the weather. Nevertheless, Rosicky feels happier there because he’s actually able to do fulfilling work and provide for himself and his family. Rosicky would rather be at the whim of the elements than at the whim of an employer. Most importantly, even when Rosicky is happy living in New York, he still develops a restlessness and a “desire to run away.” The story thus suggests that the freedom, peacefulness, and connection to nature that a rural setting offers are key to Rosicky’s happiness—and potentially to human happiness more generally.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The City vs. The Country ThemeTracker
The City vs. The Country Quotes in Neighbour Rosicky
Over there across the cornstalks his own roof and windmill looked so good to him that he promised himself to mind the Doctor and take care of himself. He was awful fond of his place, he admitted. He wasn’t anxious to leave it. And it was a comfort to think that he would never have to go farther than the edge of his own hayfield. The snow, falling over his barnyard and the graveyard, seemed to draw things together like. And they were all old neighbours in the graveyard, most of them friends; there was nothing to feel awkward or embarrassed about.
He often did over-time work and was well paid 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; he could get standing-room for a dollar.
Those blank buildings, without the stream of life pouring through them, were like empty jails. It struck young 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.
Rosicky was a little anxious about this pair. He was afraid Polly would grow so discontented that Rudy would quit the farm and take a factory job in Omaha. He had worked for a winter up there, two years ago, to get money to marry on. He had done very well, and they would always take him back at the stockyards. But to Rosicky that meant the end of everything for his son. To be a landless man was to be a wage-earner, a slave, all your life; to have nothing, to be nothing.
Well, when I come to realize what I done, of course, I felt terrible. I felt better in de stomach, but very bad in de heart. I set on my bed wid dat platter on my knees, an’ it all come to me; how hard dat poor woman save to buy dat goose, and how she get some neighbour to cook it dat got more fire, an’ how she put it in my corner to keep it away from dem hungry children. Dey was a old carpet hung up to shut my corner off, an’ de children wasn’t allowed to go in dere. An’ I know she put it in my corner because she trust me more’n she did de violin boy. I can’t stand it to face her after I spoil de Christmas. So I put on my shoes and go out into de city. I tell myself I better throw myself in de river; but I guess I ain’t dat kind of a boy.
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 many-coloured fields running on until they met that sky. The horses worked here in the 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 undeathlike 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.
