Part Five
On the day before Christmas, Rosicky is reminded of his time in London, where he was faced with the difficulties of finding food and shelter. He begins to worry about the crops and if they will be able to handle the tough winter that is ahead of them. Mary attempts to lighten the mood by reminding him of a year in which the heat destroyed the crops around the Fourth of July, and how he showed no despair at that time. This is followed by numerous stories told back and forth amongst the family, one of which recounts an episode when Rosicky was in London and stole a goose from his landlady. Afterwards, he felt such guilt that he searched the city to find a way to replace it, eventually meeting wealthy Czechs who gave him the money he needed. Polly is extremely moved by this story, and decides that she wants to invite Rudolph’s family to their home for New Year’s dinner.
Read more about this topic: Neighbour Rosicky
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“It is part of the nature of consciousness, of how the mental apparatus works, that free reason is only a very occasional function of people’s “thinking” and that much of the process is made of reactions as standardized as those of the keys on a typewriter.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
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