Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop

A novel should be something that is easy to define. One would expect the novel to have a plot, a central theme, a central character and a consistent style? The truth is that all of these things are important but not specifically necessary. Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop cannot be easily classified as a novel in normal terms. It lacks a central plot that carries the work from beginning to some sort of an ending. It does, however, contain central characters, themes, and a clearly consistent style, but the story that is told consists of small vignettes.

Cather would prefer to call Death Comes for the Archbishop a narrative as opposed to a novel. In terms of semantics a narrative is defined as "an account of events; anything that is narrated" (Holman 336). She is not necessarily wrong, but the book is certainly more than simply an account of events. A novel, on the other hand is defined as "any extended fictional narrative" (Holman 350). This definition would seem to apply to Death Comes for the Archbishop except that it is not an extended narrative, but a series of narratives.

Truthfully, one cannot read Cather's book as if it were a novel. There are many separate stories within; the Olivares, Buck Scales, Jacinto, Padre Martinez, and Friar Baltazar of Acoma who was dropped of a cliff. The stories are all held together by the common characters of Father Latour and Father Vaillant. There are also themes that run through most of the stories. The idea of justice seems to be important to the author as well as an important part of life in the southwest during this period. Maybe more important to the coherency of the book as a whole is the concept of loyalty. From the relationship of the boyhood friends who then become Catholic missionaries in America to the two cream-colored mules, Contento and Angelica, who "are always ridden together and have a great affection for each other" (Cather 60).