Death Comes for the Archbishop Themes

Throughout Willa Cather’s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop, the Catholic priests and missionaries at the center of the narrative struggle to focus on large-scale spiritual concerns instead of more immediate material ones. At first, protagonists Bishop Jean-Marie Latour and Vicar Joseph Vaillant emphasize religious beliefs and practices above all. In moments of extreme hunger and thirst, for example, Latour works to ignore his bodily needs in favor of imagining Jesus Christ’s own…

The friendship between Bishop Jean-Marie Latour and Vicar Joseph Vaillant forms the spine of Death Comes for the Archbishop. The two men have an extraordinary history, having grown up in small-town France together before traveling first to Ohio and then to New Mexico, still as a duo. And as they embark on these arduous journeys, each man makes risk-taking more possible for the other: Latour helps Vaillant leave France even in his friend’s most…

Death Comes for the Archbishop depicts the years after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), when American settlers and Catholic missionaries alike rejoiced at the acquisition of a new territory to colonize and convert. But while the novel celebrates the missionary work of protagonists like Bishop Jean-Marie Latour and Vicar Joseph Vaillant, the novel frequently hints at the damage colonization and industrialization have wrought. At one point, when Latour visits his indigenous guide Jacinto’s home…

Nearly all of the characters in Death Comes for the Archbishop are obsessed with their legacies—meaning both the Christian afterlife they might experience in heaven or hell, and the memories they will leave behind for those still on earth. As each character tries to balance these competing objectives, some go to extremes, prioritizing life after death over daily existence. Father Marino Lucero, for example, saves money (nearly 20,000 dollars in the currency of the…