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Book 7: December Night
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
While Vaillant is in Arizona, Latour and Jacinto ride south to visit Eusabio, an old Navajo friend of Latour’s. Eusabio is younger than Latour but well-respected for his fine dress, patience, and bearing, which always makes Latour think of a Roman general. Eusabio has recently lost his only son, and when Latour arrives, their greeting is solemn—all Eusabio can say is, “my friend has come.”
If Latour struggles to match Vaillant’s warmth, his reliable, muted companionship with Eusabio testifies to the bishop’s particular set of social skills. And as with Jacinto, Latour’s straightforwardness allows him to form real connections with people of different backgrounds, something Vaillant sometimes struggles with.
Themes
Latour decides to stay for three days, using the time to collect his thoughts. There are cottonwood trees all over the land, all of which are ancient and giant and bent by the winds. Eusabio gives Latour space, and as a sandstorm rages, Latour tries to decide whether or not he should call Vaillant home. Though the new priests from Auvergne are lovely, they lack all of Vaillant’s tact and decision-making power.
Again, the boundary between Latour as friend and supervisor to Vaillant is tested. It is also worth noting that, as Latour spends more time in America, he begins to see the landscape as a helpful tool for making sense of the world, rather than as an obstacle to true contemplation.
Themes
But Latour also just misses Vaillant’s friendship (“why not admit it?”, he thinks). The two men had grown up nearby but had not met until the Seminary, when Vaillant had impressed Latour with his brash manners and strange appearance. At the time, Vaillant was still choosing between the priesthood and the army. This impulsivity, so different from his own mild-mannered behavior, felt like “adventure” to Latour.
If Latour gives Vaillant strength and patience, Vaillant allows Latour the excitement and fluidity he might never be able to achieve for himself. As always, the two priests are defined by their differences even as they are brought together by them, strengthening each other as they work to strengthen the church.
Themes
Though Latour was always better at his studies, Vaillant was more able to converse with people, and more ardent in his faith. Latour had quickly learned to accept his friend’s contradictions: for example, though Vaillant always craved good food and wine, these material comforts were quickly “transformed into spiritual energy” in Vaillant’s stomach. And while Latour hates asking for money on behalf of the church, Vaillant is a skilled and eager beggar—even though he has no material possessions of his own.
In this vital passage, Latour begins to understand how material concerns can complement spiritual ones. Vaillant is an ardent and able missionary, traveling long distances and converting huge new swathes of the country to Catholicism. But in order to accomplish that task, he needs to tend to his body and spirit, finding daily, tangible sources of energy that he can then metabolize into religious work.
Themes
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Vaillant is also tremendously social, always making friends wherever he goes. While Latour is bothered by ugly landscapes and buildings (like those in Ohio), Vaillant seems only to notice the social life of a place. “Nothing one could say of Father Vaillant explained him,” Latour reflects. “The man was much greater than the sum of his qualities.”
Just as Latour embraces complexity in his cultural and religious practice, he also now adjusts to the fact that he might never truly understand his oldest friend. Perhaps more than any quality, it is Latour’s comfort with ambiguity that makes him—at least in the eyes of the novel—a truly great man.
Themes
The last time Vaillant went to Rome, his social grace and persistence even allowed him to secure an audience with the pope. Though that pope was often on “the wrong side” of European political matters, he had done a great deal to spread the faith in remote parts of the world. Therefore, he took a quick liking to Vaillant, canceling other appointments to extend his time with Vaillant.
Conversely, while Latour’s strength is defined by his complexity, Vaillant’s best quality is his ability to present things with simple force, earning himself an audience with the pope (which would normally never be awarded to someone of such low rank in the church hierarchy).
Themes
