26 pages • 52 minutes read
Willa CatherNeighbour Rosicky
Fiction | Short Story | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Analepsis (Flashback)
Analepsis (more commonly known as "flashback") occurs whenever a writer halts the main narrative to describe an earlier event. In "Neighbour Rosicky," flashbacks mostly take the form of memories, as Rosicky thinks back over his life. On a basic level, this simply allows Cather to develop characters and ideas more fully than a strictly linear narrative would allow; Rosicky's memories of New York City and London, for instance, provide opportunities for reflection on the differences between the city and the country. However, it is also thematically fitting that Cather fleshes out Rosicky's past so fully, since "Neighbour Rosicky" is in large part a story about what constitutes a worthwhile life. In other words, anecdotes like Rosicky's story of the Lifschnitz's Christmas goose not only provide readers with insight into Rosicky's character, but also echo Doctor Burleigh's conclusion that Rosicky's life was "complete and beautiful" by helping to create a narrative that feels complete.
Dialect
Dialect—ethnic, regional, or class-based differences in speech—is one of the tools Cather uses to develop characters in "Neighbour Rosicky." In particular, Cather uses speech patterns to establish a contrast between the older and younger generations. Anton and Mary Rosicky are both working-class and Anton, at least, is a first-generation immigrant. As a result, their English is accented and non-standard; Rosicky, for instance, tends to pronounce "th" as "d," and both of them make frequent use of double negatives. The Rosicky children, on theother hand, speak English more or less perfectly. To some extent, this simply reflects the fact that they have grown up in America and (at least in Rudolph's case) attended an American school. Within the context of Rudolph's choice of wife, however, the younger Rosickys' more "polished" speech underscores the tension between the two generations. Rudolph has to some extent already become indistinguishable from a "native" American like Polly, and Rosicky fears that Rudolph will gradually drift farther and farther away from his family roots, and the family farm.
Personification
Personification is a literary device that involves ascribing human qualities or actions to non-human things. It is a fairly common form of figurative language, but it has special significance in "Neighbour Rosicky," where Cather often uses it to describe Rosicky's farm and the Nebraska landscape in general; Rosicky's house, for instance, "crouch[es] low," and snow falls "graciously" (Part II, Paragraphs 12 and 14). These kinds of descriptions stand in stark contrastto Rosicky's memories of the city, which Cather associates with mechanization, sterility, and death:
The emptiness [of the windows] was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops and the belts and bands cease running…Those blank buildings, without the stream of life pouring through them, were like empty jails (Part III, Paragraph 7).
Ultimately, then, Cather's use of personification emphasizes the differences between urban and rural life, and, more specifically, the impersonality of the former and the vitality of the latter.
Related Titles
By Willa Cather
