The Professor's House: A Loss of Identity In Willa Cather's The Professor's House, we see a changing persona in Godfrey St. Diminish. From the get-go in the story, St. Diminish is a man constantly looking and getting ready for his future, a man who holds dear to his standards and beliefs. The story finishes up with a practically fragile St. Dwindle, pulled back from all that he regards significant in his life. He relinquishes everything that has made him what his identity is and lives in the memory of his lost and crude (Cather 241) youth. He aches for his Kansas childhood when he really lived as a kid progressively mindful of the significant things throughout everyday life. It's a knowledge concerning the serious memory of his fallen companion Tom Outland, who has become an image of St. Dwindle's lost youth. His developing dislike for society and how his family is up to speed in its realism makes him long for that world he accepted to be unadulterated and entire as a youthful Kansas kid (Hilgart 388).