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Book 6: Don Antonio
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
After the funeral, Latour and Vaillant go to meet Olivares’s lawyer, Boyd O’Reilly. O’Reilly is a young Irish Catholic from Boston who has just come west to practice law. O’Reilly explains that the will is straightforward: Olivares plans to leave everything to his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the ranchero had died before he was able to name the church in his will.
The arrival of Boyd O’Reilly marks the first time that Latour, Vaillant and their parishioners connect with other Americans. Again, this shift speaks to the increasingly unified, modernizing United States.
Themes
O’Reilly also informs the priests about the grounds on which Olivares’s brothers are contesting the will. They claim that Inez is too old to be Isabella’s daughter—and because Isabella does not want to reveal her real age in court, she refuses to combat this false claim. Latour does not want to get involved in such a sensitive matter, but Vaillant thinks interference is needed to ensure that the church gets built.
Here, the lines between spiritual and worldly cares again get blurred. Isabella claims not to care about certain materialistic things (like monetary inheritance) even as she frets about her looks and status. And similarly, though Latour tries to distance himself from Vaillant’s money-grubbing, Vaillant points out that all of this is material focus is needed to build a new church—a spiritual aim if there ever was one.
Themes
Vaillant arrives to see the Olivares home already in disarray. When Isabella meets him, her eyes are red from crying, but Vaillant is not gentle; instead, he insists that Isabella must come forward as being 53 (her real age) to protect herself and the church. But despite the knowledge that she could lose all of her husband’s money, Isabella cannot bring herself to do such a thing. Only when Latour shushes Vaillant does Isabella agree, with great pain, to say she is in her 50s.
If the contradictions between the two priests come to the fore now, it is also especially clear how well they complement each other. Vaillant, with his blunt impulsivity, is able to get things done, while Latour exercises some of the tact and patience his friend so blatantly lacks.
Themes
O’Reilly wins his case, and Vaillant feels gratified, though Latour cannot help but regret being “cruel” to Isabella. The night after the trial, after a crowd of friends gathers at the Olivares house, Isabella throws an impromptu party. When the priests arrive, she comes out to greet them, drunk on champagne. Eyes filled with affection, Isabella announces that she will never forgive them for making her “lie” about her age.
From the very first days of his arrival in New Mexico, Latour has understood that his textbook Catholic principles will have to be expanded and reshaped to fit this new environment. Now, Isabella’s gleeful claim that her real age was actually a “lie” illustrates this principle: though Isabella is a devout Catholic, she also lets herself bend the truth and allows herself to care, intensely, about more quotidian matters.
Themes
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