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Book 9: Chapter 2
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
The next morning, Latour wakes up, already feeling better now that he is close to his cathedral; he knows the church will also be his tomb when he dies. Proudly, Latour reflects on his life: when he arrived in Santa Fé, there were still buffalo, and now, a railroad is being put in. Though most people expected Latour to retire in Clermont, he always found himself “homesick” for America whenever he returned to France. Maybe, Latour thinks, “there was too much past” in Europe.
For the first time, Latour is able to see exactly how much his own expanding life in Santa Fé paralleled the United States’ expansion. Importantly, Latour’s belief that there is “too much past” in Europe speaks to his sense of freedom in the New World…thought it also devalues the people and cultures that have existed for thousands of years in his diocese.
Themes
Moreover, whereas in France Latour feels that it takes so long for the day to get started, in Santa Fé, Latour always wakes feeling like a young man. He finds the “air of new countries” invigorating, in a way that France—plowed and planted for centuries—is not. Though “that air would disappear from the whole earth in time,” this loss will not happen until long after Latour is gone. Now, therefore, Latour goes gleefully “into the morning,” feeling wild and free.
Even as Latour contemplates, with pride, his own progress, this rare flash-forward emphasizes just how much is lost in industry and development’s forward march. More than just mourning Latour’s impending death, then, this break in the novel’s usual structure suggests that the very tame, domestic gardens Latour helped to seed will also eventually destroy the fresh air and the freedom he so cherishes.
Themes
Literary Devices
