Rosicky is a sixty-five-year-old Czech immigrant to the United States. After working as a wage-laborer in London and New York City, Rosicky moved to Nebraska, to become a farmer. Although his life on the Great Plains is often precarious, he prefers it to working for someone else; for Rosicky, working as a wage-laborer means not only the loss of freedom, but also (and more importantly) the loss of humanity amidst the conflicting demands employers, unions, and other elements of urban employment. Since Rosicky is a tremendously empathic man, the thought of necessarily being at odds with one person or another distresses him. Cather implies that this capacity for empathy is one reason why, despite his obvious hard work, Rosicky has never truly thrived financially: he cannot bear to use or disadvantage others in order to get ahead.

Rosicky's compassion also shines through in his devotion to his family. Although he married relatively late in life, his wife, Mary, and their six children have since become the center of his existence. The story opens with Rosicky learning that he has a "bad heart" that will likely kill him within a few years, and this knowledge plays into his increased anxiety for his children's futures (Part I, Paragraph 1).