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Book 8: Auspice Maria!
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
When Mother Superior Philomène dies, her letters include a message from Archbishop Latour, dated 1888; in it, Latour reflects on his friend Vaillant’s death, musing that this absence makes Vaillant feel closer to Latour than ever before. Latour is choosing to live out his days near the village of Tesuque, near two giant apricot trees he had stumbled across in his travels. The apricot trees, which have existed since the grandparents in Tesuque were children, remind Latour of the apricot trees in France.
The vast time jump forward brings Latour into a world where many of the most familiar people to him—Vaillant, Philomène, Kit Carson—have passed away. No wonder, then, that Latour seeks comfort in his beloved fruit trees, with their promise of continuity, beauty, and a bountiful future. That the trees remind Latour of home also suggests that they help aid some of the homesickness Latour feels in Vaillant’s wake.
Themes
In his retirement, Latour spends much of his time educating the new priests from Auvergne. He also focuses on gardening, growing cherries and pears and all sorts of elaborate crops. “Wherever there was a French priest,” Latour thinks, “there should be a garden of fruit trees and vegetables and flowers.” With the help of Bernard Ducrot, a young Seminarian recently arrived to Santa Fé, Latour also domesticates many of the local wildflowers. Latour frequently feels that Bernard’s arrival is like a blessing from God, and that Bernard is almost like a son to him.
In this important quotation, Latour makes explicit the link between faith and fruit trees; as both a priest and a planter, he works to give enjoyment and comfort to others, and in both cases, the fruits of his labors can only be seen over the course of time. Though Latour’s love for Bernard is tender, his craving for a son perhaps suggests that the absence of any real family in Latour’s life is harder than he lets on. After all, even as he writes to Vaillant’s sister, he seems to keep in poor touch with the relatives of his own back in Auvergne.
Themes
Literary Devices
