Leddy is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. In the following excerpt, he examines the disparity of perspectives between the observer and the narrator in Cather's "Neighbour Rosicky.''

The organization of Obscure Destinies works along more complex lines that involve not only thematic but narrative elements as well. Cather's trilogy centers on acts of observation and narration, on the discrepancies between the perceptions of an observing character and the perceptions of a fictional narrator, and on acts of narrative compensation that make up for what observers fail to see. Such compensation is in strikingly different ways a distinctive feature of the first two stories of Obscure Destinies , "Neighbour Rosicky," and "Old Mrs. Harris," and it is Cather's forsaking of the compensating narrator that accounts for much of the atmosphere of sadness and loss in "Two Friends." Thus the narrative organization of Obscure...