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Book 2: The Lonely Road to Mora
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Death Comes for the Archbishop, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Spirituality vs. the Material World
Friendship and Compromise
Humanity’s Relationship with Nature
Colonialism, Industry, and Loss
Memory, Death, and Afterlives
Summary
Analysis
Given the long commute to Baltimore (first on horseback, then on steamboat, then over mountains), Latour has still only spent four months in his actual diocese. So when he returns from the Provincial Council, Latour is eager to explore his district. He hires Jacinto, a young indigenous man from the Pecos pueblo, as a guide, and heads over to the mission towns to the west. First, however, he spends some time with Father Gallegos, the wealthy priest at Albuquerque.
Latour’s struggle to get from place to place here reflects the wildness of his new country; there are no roads, no railways, and no established networks of transportation. There are not even maps—so only people like Carson and Jacinto, long familiar with this terrain, can accurately navigate it.
Themes
Though Gallegos is hospitable, his behavior is scandalous: he is constantly drinking or playing poker, and Latour and Vaillant are determined to put a stop to it. Latour is especially frustrated to learn that the older priest has not visited the remote Ácoma village in years, meaning that there are many unbaptized children there. Yet even as Latour resolves to suspend Gallegos from all priestly functions, he has to admit that there is something engaging and impressive about the man.
Father Gallegos epitomizes the materialistic, self-serving worldview that Latour and Vaillant see as antithetical to their Catholic values. The fact that Gallegos has denied his parishioners the sacraments because he does not want to travel shows just how much one bad priest can deter the whole church’s mission.
Themes
Latour himself wants to see Ácoma, but before they arrive, Vaillant persuades Latour to spend a night with the elderly blind priest in the village of Isleta; the priest is known for having won the trust of the indigenous people in his community. Latour loves Isleta immediately, with its white houses and French-seeming acacia trees. The padre, Father Jesus, welcomes Latour, though he is surprised to see that Latour is so young.
If Gallegos pays too much attention to the tangible, material things in front of them, Father Jesus’s blindness suggests a more internal or spiritual focus. Latour’s youth, frequently remarked upon by his colleagues, further links his own journey to that of New Mexico as a whole—over time, the priest will grow up with his country.
Themes
The padre shows the priest his garden, which is filled with cactus plants; there are also a number of parrots with clipped wings. Jesus explains that the colorful feathers were highly valued by the local indigenous peoples as ornaments, and that he had gained favor with the villagers by raising the birds. Latour is amazed by how simply Father Jesus lives: the old man is childlike and superstitious, but there is also a “golden goodness” about him.
Unlike Gallegos, who pays attention only to the material objects that call to him, Jesus strikes a balance—he finds out what objects might earn his parishioners’ trust, and he uses his own home and garden to honor those desires. Striking this balance between spiritual care and material reality will be a lifelong challenge for both Latour and Vaillant.
Themes
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The only decoration in Father Jesus’s house is a little wooden parrot, carved into something strangely lifelike from a stick of wood. Jesus explains that the carving is his “treasure,” and that it is older than the pueblo itself. Even before the Spaniards arrived, the pueblos of northern New Mexico would embark on dangerous trading trips to get live parrots from the tropics in the south. When a bird was brought back alive, it was a central fixture of life for the whole village; when the creature died, its death was widely mourned.
In the novel, wood carvings, many of which have been softened and worn down by years of history, make tangible the transformative effects of memory. Many of the people in the novel are preoccupied with securing their legacies, but the wood figurines—always changing shape due to use—show just how impossible it is for anything to be precisely preserved over generations.
Themes
Before Latour leaves, Father Jesus tells him that he will be pleased by the religious practices of the indigenous peoples at Ácoma and Laguna. He also tells them about a “very holy” painting of St. Joseph at Ácoma, given to the people there by one of the Kings of Spain. The painting is said to work miracles—it always produces rain, even when there is not any rain anywhere else in the area.
If the wood carvings hint at the malleability of memory, this painting at Ácoma speaks even more directly to the way time reshapes legacy. This is the painting Garcia Maria de Allande was talking about in the prologue, that had once belonged to his grandfather—a wealthy merchant, but hardly a King of Spain. And while the painting was merely an incidental gift, forced out of Allande’s grandfather, it has now, in its new habitat, become a divine symbol and a guarantee of miraculous rain.
Themes
