AIM 104 - Death Comes For The Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop Reading Log

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a narrative by Willa Cather that focuses on the details of their travels of Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant. I personally think there is too much description of scenery in the text, it forced me to read everything slowly and sometimes even two or three times to understand what is being described. This book compares with another novel that we have read, Huckleberry Finn in which they travel long ways to accomplish something. Another thing that bothers me in academic readings is the mention of religion. Being Asian American, I was not raised up with the specific background and it’s sometimes hard to comprehend certain words, proverbs, and biblical meanings. This text had everything to do with the Catholic religion, a branch of Christianity that I’m slowly learning about now.

Similar to Huckleberry Finn, both Latour and Vaillant encounters a lot of obstacles, they take a total of a year to get from Ohio to New Mexico, a trip which in modern times would only take a couple of hours. What is worst of all is that upon arrival, Latour has to acquire authority which sets him on another adventure away from his goal of going to New Mexico. In our class discussion, we also agreed upon the fact that it was also similar to the Odyssey by Homer, where Odysseus took a 10 year journey to get home.

The whole reason for their travels to the new world is because of religion and their faiths. They wanted to travel to Santa Fe to build a church and promote Christianity. They serve as missionaries of God. Apparently their faiths were so strong that they endured all that trouble and still wanted to start a church. Latour shows the most beliefs in his faiths, he does more than build a church, and he teaches people to grow things. Both Latour and Vaillant seem to have a connection where they have something the other doesn’t have and they need each other for support. I think this is why they are so close and when Vaillant dies, Latour seems to be looking for a replacement. These people have to feel very strong about their beliefs for them to go though all this just to promote Christianity, mainly the branch of Catholicism.

I personally dislike this book because of the detailed description of the landscape as they travel and the many characters that are presented to us. Most of them come from a religious background and it’s hard to differentiate and keep track of. I had a hard time understanding why these religious men went though all the trouble and how their faith was so strong to move them to do these things. The whole theme revolving around religion bores me, but as long as that medium helps civilize people then it’s a good thing that religion exists but I never found any interest in it. I’m more of a science type guy, life is based on facts.