“Neighbour Rosicky” is about the quest for a good life. Various characters in the story live with different value systems and in different circumstances—in cities or in the country, with or without money, with or without families—but the story portrays Anton Rosicky as the happiest character of all. Rosicky searches for the good life on two different continents and in several different cities, eventually settling in rural Nebraska and becoming a farmer. Here, he comes to find what the story suggests are the most meaningful aspects of life: freedom, self-reliance, family, generosity, community, and beauty. None of these things are particularly extravagant or complicated, and so Rosicky’s journey demonstrates that a happy, fulfilling life can be based on gratitude for simple things.
The central concern of the story is what makes a good life. It’s this good life that Rosicky is searching for throughout his life, seeking happiness and fulfillment in different cities, countries, and lifestyles. At the start of the story, Doctor Burleigh considers what, exactly, makes the Rosickys so uniquely happy. He knows that even though they are not wealthy, the Rosickys are a happy family that is “free and easy” and “comfortable.” He even ponders if having a happy life is incompatible with acquiring a lot of money. Burleigh’s pondering establishes how to live the good life as the story’s central question, and it begins to suggest that a happy, fulfilling life is about more than just material success.
Rosicky’s own trajectory embodies the quest for a good life. Before settling in Nebraska, he traveled extensively, living in both the U.K. and the U.S. in an attempt to establish a fulfilling life. But as he chased money and exciting experiences in cities like London and New York, he found himself dissatisfied with his work, alienated from other people, and cut off from the beauty of the natural world. This taught him that wealth and happiness aren’t necessarily linked, and that a good life can be simpler and humbler than people may assume. His unhappiness in the city eventually leads him to settle in a small town in the Nebraskan countryside, where he hopes to build a life that’s more meaningful.
In Nebraska, Rosicky realizes that owning his own land, connecting to nature, focusing on his family and community, and finding joy in life’s simple pleasures are the pillars of a good life. A great deal of Rosicky’s happiness has to do with the freedom and self-sufficiency that comes with finally owning his own land (as opposed to renting from a landlord). Moreover, he’s now surrounded by nature, something that he finds deeply enjoyable and fulfilling. He takes time to drive home and admire the farms in the High Prairie; rather than envying this land that other farmers own, he enjoys just getting to look at nature’s beauty.
Rosicky also finds deep fulfillment in providing for and spending time with his family. Rosicky’s wife, Mary Rosicky, believes that “life [has] gone well” for her and her husband because they both believe that it’s better to enjoy life’s simple pleasures than to be preoccupied with building wealth or chasing fleeting moments of excitement. They’re both happy to make certain “sacrifices” as long as they can spend time together and with their children, which suggests that these sorts of connections are what make life worthwhile. Rosicky is similarly happy when he’s socializing with members of his community, and he appreciates simple moments like getting to talk to the pretty girl who works at the town’s general store. Rosicky’s happiness with this lifestyle is evident in his outwardly peaceful and content disposition. Even though he’s aging and experiencing heart failure throughout the story, he does “not look like a sick man.” While he is older, his hair has barely any grey in it, and he appears “reflective” but in a “gay” (happy) way. His internal happiness is visible externally.
Consequently, it’s important for Rosicky to pass on what he has learned about the good life to his children, especially to his eldest son, Rudolph. Rudolph and his new wife, Polly, are initially wary of Rosicky’s way of life. Polly finds the countryside lonely, and Rudolph worries that he will not make enough money to survive. But Rosicky, drawing on his own experiences, teaches them that city living is only enjoyable if one is already rich—otherwise, it’s incredibly difficult and unfulfilling. Rosicky is successful in his efforts, as Polly (who had initially been distant and cold) eventually warms up to Rosicky and realizes that he’s led a modest yet enviable life. Indeed, when she looks at Rosicky’s well-worn hands, she sees them as a symbol of a life well-lived through hard work and gratitude. In this way, Rosicky impresses on Polly—and, by extension, on Rudolph—that meaningful work and an appreciation of simple pleasures (like nature’s beauty) are what make for a good life.
Most importantly, Rosicky doesn’t want his children to experience “the cruelty of human beings.” Given that Rosicky experienced this cruelty when he lived in cities, he believes that a well-rounded life spent outdoors, surrounded by loving family and a tight-knit community, is the most fulfilling path. However, the story is also careful to show that Rosicky’s life isn’t all good—the work he does is physically strenuous, and he often faces financial hardship. Yet this only makes Rosicky more grateful for what he has: for instance, when a corn crop fails, he throws a picnic to celebrate the good aspects of his life rather than focusing on the bad.
At the end of the story, after Rosicky has died, Doctor Burleigh reflects again on the question of the good life, just as he did at the beginning of the story. He concludes that Rosicky’s life—which consisted of struggling before finally living happily and freely in the country—was “complete and beautiful.” Ending the story in this way makes it clear that while Rosicky’s life wasn’t perfect, it was the good life in the sense that it was happy, fulfilling, and meaningful.
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The Good Life Quotes in Neighbour Rosicky
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.
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.
They had been at one accord not to hurry through life, not to be always skimping and saving. They saw their neighbours buy more land and feed more stock than they did, without discontent. Once when the creamery agent came to the Rosickys to persuade them to sell him their cream, he told them how much money the Fasslers, their nearest neighbours, had made on their cream last year.
“Yes,” said Mary, “and look at them Fassler children! Pale, pinched little things, they look like skimmed milk. I’d rather put some colour into my children’s faces than put money into the bank.”
The agent shrugged and turned to Anton.
“I guess we’ll do like she says,” said Rosicky.
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.
“‘We ain’t got an ear,’ he says, ‘nor nobody else ain’t got none. All the corn in the country was cooked by three o’clock today, like you’d roasted it in an oven.’
“‘You mean you won’t get no crop at all?’ I asked him. I couldn’t believe it, after he’d worked so hard.
“‘No crop this year,’ he says. ‘That’s why we’re havin’ a picnic. We might as well enjoy what we got.’
“An’ that’s how your father behaved, when all the neighbours was so discouraged they couldn’t look you in the face. An’ we enjoyed ourselves that year, poor as we was, an’ our neighbours wasn’t a bit better off for bein’ miserable. Some of ’em grieved till they got poor digestions and couldn’t relish what they did have.’”
It wasn’t nervous, it wasn’t a stupid lump; it was a warm brown human hand, with some cleverness in it, a great deal of generosity, and something else which Polly could only call “gypsy-like,”—something nimble and lively and sure, in the way that animals are.
Polly remembered that hour long afterwards; it had been like an awakening to her. It seemed to her that she had never learned so much about life from anything as from old Rosicky’s hand. It brought her to herself; it communicated some direct and untranslatable message.
He was thinking, indeed, about Polly, and how he might never have known what a tender heart she had if he hadn’t got sick over there.
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.
