Paper on CATHER, DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHIBISHOP - Essay Example

DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHIBISHOP  Death Comes For the Archbishop, being a early 20th century novel about the establishment of Christianity on the newly acquired New Mexico territory of the US, is a depiction of the fusion of native and European cultures in America. The Bishop Jean Marie Latour, who goes to New Mexico on a mission to found an Apostolic Vicarate in New Mexico is faced with the complex situation of mutually hostile “thirty Indian nations” inside his area of operation and also the devout but “untaught and unsheppered” Mexican society to mend (Cather, 9 of the preface).

Throughout the book, the question being addressed is that of different identities and cultures that come across each other and are compelled to live with each other. There is the religious identity of the natives, the Mexicans, and the conventional Christian identity that stand face to face demanding mutual correlation and redefinition. Also, there is the conflict between being a Mexican under the French rule and an being an American. This is reflected in the words of the Mexican youth in the novel (Cather, 19).

The boy says, “ they say at Albuquerque that now we are all Americans….I will never be an American. They are infidels.” The author uses the image of goats as a metaphor to show the flexible and humanitarian mindset of bishop Latour (Cather, 26). When the bishop sees a fleet of goats passing by, he thinks, “the goat had always been the symbol of pagan lewdness…(but)…their fleece had warmed many a good Christian, and their rich milk nourished sickly children” (Cather, 26). The logical and practical soundness of his mind when it comes to other belief systems is reflected in this statement.

In his letter to his brother, bishop expresses his feeling that “church can do more than the Fort to make these poor Mexicans ‘good Americans’” (Cather, 33). The situation the bishop had to face was not as simple as he had stated in the above sentence. The human resource he had to work with was the cowboys who drank and also got the natives drunk and created an atmosphere of chaos, with lots of rifle shots banging here and there (Cather, 43). It was with these kind of people that he had to build his new apostolate.

The ideology of ‘manifest destiny’ was in its formative years, and the hero of this novel had a role to play in order to enhance this concept.Cather has given bishop Latour, a character in which he personifies the rich congruence of European culture which was flexible enough to accept new environments. And there was this church that was built by bishop in the New Mexico, which has as its structural theme, the unity of Catholicism and America. A sympathetic concern towards the Indians and the less Christianized Mexicans are the driving forces for the bishop Latour in his every action.

Thus the hero of this book represents the need of that period to blend Catholicism with semi-pagan Mexican Christianity (influenced by Indian religious notions as well) and the primitive Indian culture. In the narrative, there is an instance when, an old Mexican woman is prevented from entering the church by her Protestant English boss (Cather, 217). But Latour had taken that woman to the church (Cather, 217). Mutual empathy between cultures and transference of cultural values are the basic themes of discussion here.

The question of integration thus becomes the focal point in this novel. To remind the reader of history without telling history or historical facts is the beauty of this book. Works CitedWilla, Cather, “Death Comes For the Archbishop”, Sydney: ReadHowYouWant.com, 2008.