Previous
Book 9: Chapter 1
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
Towards the end of 1888, Latour—who up to that point had continued to travel around the diocese—gets caught in the rain and develops a cold. From that point forward, he wants to move back into his old study, right in the heart of Santa Fé, even though his successor (the new archbishop) has taken up residence there.
In his old age, Latour is more willing to admit that material things can provide real solace; just the shape of his old study is enough to give him comfort in his sickness. Interestingly, Latour’s newly frail state also links him to Vaillant, who was constantly struggling against such ailments.
Themes
Literary Devices
Latour wants to arrive in Santa Fé in the late afternoon, so he can once more look down on the city from the hilltop that he and Vaillant used to frequent. Now, however, the old adobes are intermingled with modern buildings, and Latour cannot help but feel that the ugly houses from Ohio have “followed” him. Fortunately, Latour’s cathedral feels perfect—it at once reminds him of France and sounds “the note of the South!”
The ever-encroaching presence of more modern, distinctly American architecture again points to just how quickly history and industry have started to transform New Mexico.
Themes
Only Molny, the French architect, and Latour had ever fully appreciated the church and its dramatic setting. Molny used to say that “either a building is a part of a place, or it is not”; in this case, the place and the building would only make each other stronger. Now, Bernard points Latour’s attention to the red mountains, called the Sangre de Cristo. Latour has always thought that the mountains are the color not of fresh blood but of dried blood, the color of the blood of the saints and martyrs back in Rome.
Latour has still not quite shed his desire to “assert” himself architecturally, but he and Molny do agree that the building must be “part” of its environment—and thus that the environment is worth paying attention to and honoring. Latour still links the dramatic vistas of this desert world to antiquity, to the stories of the bible and the traditions of Rome.
Themes
