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3230Sept. 16, 1999: Essays on Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop
Sara Ann Hardesty
Responding to the criticism that Death Comes for the Archbishop is not a novel, Willa Cather proposed that the work was a narrative. Her choice of the word narrative signifies that the structure of Death Comes for the Archbishop is closer to that of a biography.
A narrative is a type of composition used to recount events over a period of time and can incorporate description as well plot, but it does not necessarily have to. Death Comes for the Archbishop follows the guidelines of a narrative in that it recounts the events of Father Latour's life, beginning when he is appointed to New Mexico and ending with his death. Cather incorporates description into her narration, but does not offer dramatic plot structure.
A novel utilizes the elements of narration, specifically including description and plot. Novels also incorporate a climax to the story along with denouement. Plot is unfolded by the actions, speech and thoughts of a character. It is these actions that lead to the climax and the resolution of the story.
Based upon the guidelines used to classify a novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop does not meet the requirements and is therefore not a novel. Her work tells a story, but does not offer plot, climax or resolution. The events that are recounted in Cather's work do not build upon each other in order to offer a climax. Each event is no more significant than the one before it; for example, Cather places just as much emphasis on Latour's relationship with Olivares as he does with helping Sade pray (p 175, 213).
While the events themselves do not add up to create the dramatic plot structure necessary to call Death Comes for the Archbishop a novel, each individual event experienced by Latour, is in itself a story that includes both climax and resolution. An example of this is Father Latour's death. It begins with him getting sick and living his last days, building up to his final moments and culminating in his death. The resolution to this individual event is the bell tolling and Latour being placed in the church he built. Each event in Latour's life does have plot and resolution, creating difficulty in not calling it a novel. However, if the work is examined as a whole piece, from beginning to end, it is evident that while it fits the boundaries of narration, it does not meet the qualifications of a novel.
In the end, Death Comes for the
Archbishop is not a novel, is narration and is, as the
critics say, "hard to classify." Her work flows like a
biography and progresses as one, recounting Latour's
experiences until his death. Not classifying this work as a
novel does not diminish Cather's ability to write. In fact,
quite the opposite is true. Cather's landscape is
breathtaking and her character's continue to develop
throughout the story. Her work may not be a novel, but the
ability to write an entire work of fiction without the
connection of plot is a feat that few can
match.
Jan Matney
Upon reading and reflecting on Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, I have a hard time classifying this piece of literature as a novel. Indeed, Death Comes for the Archbishop seems more like a collection of anecdotal stories than a novel of conventional form.
Harmon and Holman's A Handbook to Literature says the term novel, is "used in its broadest sense to designate any extended fictional narrative" (350). While DCA certainly fits this most general of definitions, its unconventional structure -- the seeming lack of a general plot and obvious climax, its continual digressions from Bishop Latour's present to the anecdotal episodes of his, as well as, others' pasts, along with the method of Cather's presentation, leads one inclined to label this piece more as a narrative, a simple "account of events," as The American Heritage Dictionary describes the term.
DCA doesn't seem to be driven by a plot so much as by the stream of consciousness of the narrator. Much the way the mind will jump from thought to thought or memory to memory, Cather's narrator tells the story of Bishop Latour's life through contrasting, non-chronological stories. For example, in Chapter 1, Book 4, the narrator has Latour waking to the sound of a bell which then leads Fathers Latour and Vaillant into a discussion of its history as well as, the history of silver work in general. Directly from this discussion, comes the request by Vaillant that Latour give audience to a man who had just been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and from there, we are told the story of Juan Diego in the year 1531. This type of jumping around on the narrator's part, not only lends a sense of a more loose connectedness than we are used to in a novel, but also prevents us from locating a pivotal point, or climax to the plot.
Given that Cather has chosen to use multiple anecdotes to describe Latour's life as a Bishop, rather than using a strong plot with the typical climax and resulting denouement, it seems that the term "narrative" is the more apt label for Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Terri Benedict
Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop is in fact a hard book to classify. Whereas a novel is a long fictional story written in prose, Willa Cather writes Death Comes for the Archbishop more episodically. She uses books within the book to signify a significant passage of time, but doesn't always neatly connect to the previous book. Although she gets her points across, Cather seems to tell the story in separate episodes instead of altogether as one story. It seems as though she wants more focus on each of these books. To be used to point out a specific event, or put more emphasis in the doings of the people in each book, who knows. It's almost as though each book is a separate story being told from the beginning to end, connecting a little to the book before it in order to maintain a little bit of smoothness in the writing as a whole.
In a narrative, the author gives an account of actions or events. In Death Comes for the Archbishop, I believe Willa Cather writes the story both as a narrative and as a novel. She does in fact give accounts of actions and events, yet she weaves a tale of fiction into the recallings.
Cather's style is final and direct. She poses hard definite outlines, and finishes Death Comes to the Archbishop without false brilliance. She writes by giving a simple account of people, and things she has felt and remembered. "Instead of fumbling with technique, she keeps her mind on people and what they are thinking and doing (Cowley)." As well, Cather has a remarkable skill for writing beautifully detailed, and descriptive accounts of the people and land encountered within her writing.
"Cather has come to the point where she can do two or three things at once which a novelist must do. She can evoke by a few characteristic touches and by subtle suggestion a scene and a society without producing merely a 'document' "(Joseph Wood Cruch). "She has a faculty of seeing people with sympathy but without sentiment, of exactly telling their experiences, of emphasizing neither the good nor the bad, of changing nothing to meet popular taste" (Cowley).
In summary, Willa Cather is a remarkable writer. She uses not only past experiences, but her remarkable talents to write fiction that is not only narrative in telling, but also includes a great deal of description. Whether her writing is regarded as a novel by some, or as a narrative herself, it has elements of both in Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Matt Johnson
A narrative? How novel…
I found these definitions at an online guide to free online dictionaries (if you want, you can buy the newest online version of the OED for only $795, but this seemed to be cheaper and more fun):
- Main Entry:
nar·ra·tive
Pronunciation: 'nar-&-tiv
Function: noun
Date: 1566
1 : something that is
narrated : STORY
2 : the art or practice of narration
3 : the representation in art of an event or story;
also : an example of such a representation
- narrative adjective
- nar·ra·tive·ly adverb
- Main Entry: novel
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian novella
Date: 1639
1 : an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events
2 : the literary
genre consisting of novels
- nov·el·is·tic /"nä-v&-'lis-tik/
adjective
- nov·el·is·ti·cal·ly
/-ti-k(&-)lE/
adverb
- Main Entry:
nov·el
Pronunciation: 'nä-v&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, new, from Latin novellus, from diminutive of novus new -- more at NEW
Date: 15th century
1 : new and not resembling something formerly known or used
2 : original or striking especially in conception or style <a novel scheme to collect money>
I think that one of the hardest problems in distinguishing novel from narrative in DCA is, first of all, distinguishing between the terms "novel" and "narrative" themselves. A narrative seems to be, well, something that is told as a story, or at least being caught in the act of telling one of those stories. A novel seems to be, wait a minute, a narrative? What am I supposed to infer from that? Is this the sound of one hand clapping, Confucius laughing? Have I have been duped?
As far as I can tell, all dictionary definitions and joking aside, Death Comes For the Archbishop is a solid mix of both prose and narrative, leaning a little heavier on the narrative side. Cather does explore her characters' humanity, following them and tugging the reader along from event to event, but we, the readers, only get the perspective of the fly on the wall at least, a shallow reading of the characters' feelings and emotions at best. We are never invited deep into the minds of her constructs as we are in most "novels."
What Cather does do, though, is create an artistic rendering of the characters and the world that they live in. The reader can, with just a little imagination, see the heat shimmer off the desert, feel the sun beat down on them; they can create, from the general descriptions, characters of flesh and blood. The reader is given a series of snapshots, taken at different times, with nothing substantial to fill in the gapsthis separates it from the dictionary definition of the "novel" which follows, usually, a thicker chronology of the characters' lives. Cather based the characters in DCA on non-fictional models and that (in addition to exhaustive research), I think, is what makes it seem like an historical narrative rather than the traditional novel.
In the end, I think that I would agree with Cather when she asked "Why bother?" The criteria are at least partially met for each genre, but neither meets all of them, so. Unless some earnest young scholar cuts out the evidence for DCA being a novel, cuts out the evidence for its being a narrative, puts them both into piles and places them on the scales to receive final judgement by sheer weight, there is no way of finally pigeonholing Death Comes for the Archbishop into a single genre. Let the debate rage on, but I say potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto, let's call the whole thing off…
Pax Vobiscum.
Beth Lowe
When one thinks of a novel, a word that usually will come to mind is fiction. In fact, other meanings for the word novel are new and unique. Although an author may use real places, real time, or base their story on real events in part, their outcome is essentially a creation. We, as readers, are in a sense captive to the writer's imagination and must conform to the rules of the worlds they create.
If we accept this, then Willa Cather's piece Death Comes for the Archbishop must be seen as a narration, rather than a novel. She is not fabricating, but rather recounting the story of Father Latour (based on Father Lamy) and his experiences in New Mexico. Her descriptions of the landscapes and people are so recognizably accurate; we can see her more as a reporter than a fiction writer in this book. For example she writes about the desert west of Albuquerque as a "country of dry ashes; no juniper, no rabbit brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus, and patches of wild pumpkins" which "looks less like a plant than like a great colony of grey-green lizards, moving and suddenly arrested by fear" (88). She uses her talents as a writer to almost retell the "story" of the landscape. However, she does not attempt to change its reality.
Since this book is written chronologically, based in actual history and set in a real location, we can see Cather's point was not to tell us a plot-driven tale with complex characters and heavy symbolism. It is more correct to read the book as a report and to be immersed in Cather's ability to describe, recount and narrate. Wherever she embellishes, she does not exaggerate. Her imaginative descriptions do not detract from the pith of Father Latour's life experiences, but rather they enrich the meagerness of his survival.
Death Comes for the Archbishop tells us an existing (not novel) tale with artistic narration. As readers of this work, we have both feet grounded in authenticity, but have our minds occupied with skillful imaginings.
Rachel McKinzie
According to A Handbook to Literature by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman, "Novel is used in its broadest sense to designate any extended fictional narrative almost always in prose" (350). As this definition states, it would appear that Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather is a novel, however, there are several reasons why it may be asserted that DCA is not a novel. I think that one of the main reasons could be that this book almost comes across as non-fiction. Cather tells such a great story, and when I read this book, I feel like I am right there traveling on horseback alongside Father Latour.
This story also might not be called a novel because of its settings. It seems like the story is really happening not only because of the characters, but also because of the location and plot of the story. Every place that is mentioned in the book is a real place that is recognizable for anyone who has traveled in New Mexico. I am able to picture the mesas, the flat land and juniper trees that Father Latour observes as he ventures through the land. I am also able to see the small houses with white-washed walls and the dirt floors. I think that even if you have never been to New Mexico, you would still be able to mentally see the scenes of the book as they unfold because Cather does such a wonderful job of describing the setting.
Since DCA is so believable and realistic, it differs from many other books that may be classified as novels. Even though the setting is not in present-day, I can still picture myself in the scenes and occurrences that Cather describes. This may be why Cather calls this book a "narrative." Not only is it realistic, but it tells a story and re-counts events. DCA also concentrates on a great amount of detail and description. This in itself makes the book more like a narrative. If someone is telling a story, they usually include a lot of description and detail to involve the listener in the story and make it something they can relate to. Cather does exactly this in DCA. She draws the reader in with her wonderful and accurate details and descriptions of settings and makes it seem like she is telling a story, not just writing a book.
Jessica Reed
What would some reasons be for asserting that Death Comes for the Archbishop is not a novel?
Initially, I had trouble with this question. In my naïve mind I believed that all works of fiction could be categorized as a novel. But, soon after beginning Death Comes for the Archbishop, I realized how much this book is not a novel. As I read I kept picturing not a 20th century reprint, but a 19th century French bishop's dusty leather journal. The book is alive with the stories of people and places, but the detail on Bishop Latour remains relatively subdued throughout. Cather's technique of breaking Latour's life and experiences into sections of interweaved stories aided my reading of her book as more of a journal.
The book is soaked with vivid description, most notably with regards to the environment surrounding Bishop Latour. In parts, the book becomes more of a visual guide to 19th century New Mexico than anything else. The combination of the vivid descriptions and the more personal "journal" feel of Death Comes for the Archbishop make this book much more of a personal narrative than a novel. Which leads me into the next question…
What does Cather calling Death Comes for the Archbishop a "narrative" mean?
I feel that Cather calling Death Comes for the Archbishop a narrative shows that her intent with this work was to not only entertain her readers, but captivate them as well. As if she was linking herself to the Indian and Mexican subcultures of the book, Cather recreated the narrative feeling of storytellers and the oral traditions of many culture. Cather wanted to bring the reader into Latour's life, as well as the lives around him, in the way that only a narrative could. By putting the reader into the shoes of the characters and letting us see through their eyes, Cather tells a narrative that is far bigger and much more personal than any novel could be.
Brett Ganyard
As I was gathering information on the World Wide Web for my discussion for class, I encountered snippets of the debate as to the classification of Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. Having "thumbed through" a few arguments and some reader responses to her books and having read the work, I have come to a safe conclusion: If Cather would like her book remembered as a narrative, then we should respect her wishes and let it lie at that.
The reason? It's not a novel. At least not a good one.
Cather can write and what she did in DCA proves her talent. Her descriptions are intriguing and she can paint a wonderful landscape with words that any reader can feel completely encompassed in. Her characters are solid; you love them or hate them and you have a number of reasons to defend your position. All the bits and pieces of DCA are sound. No, the problem is not with her technical style so much as her overall composition. There's no plot.
What Cather has essentially given us is a collection of anecdotes about a couple of Catholic priests spreading religion in newly acquired plots of American soil. It's true that by the end of the book, the stories ebb themselves together and remarkably even make a strong impression, however, the last quarter of a book is not the strongest locus to begin a plot. The reader would like a reason or even a clue or mild suggestion as to what the book is going to be about by the time he is half way through it.
I was pretty sure it had something to do with those mules as they seemed to work themselves back into the story a number of times. (I was quite positive of this when the one time Father Latour decided not to take his pearl-colored mule on an emergency trip and instead opted for the larger army mule, it died in the snowstorm, thus saving noble Angelica.) Alas, it wasn't about the mules.
One loose definition of a narrative is simply the telling of a series of events. Perfect. The definition does not exist that classifies this book any better. Cather knew what she was doing all along. Write a fantastically written story with no plot and call it a novel. Doubt begins to creep into the minds of scholars and critics as to the legitity of this "novel". A controversy is raised and controversy sells books. Finally, after incredible sales and royalties are collected, label the book for what it is: A narrative.
Does she know how to play her audience or what?
Damon Garr
A novel should be something that is easy to define. One would expect the novel to have a plot, a central theme, a central character and a consistent style? The truth is that all of these things are important but not specifically necessary. Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop cannot be easily classified as a novel in normal terms. It lacks a central plot that carries the work from beginning to some sort of an ending. It does, however, contain central characters, themes, and a clearly consistent style, but the story that is told consists of small vignettes.
Cather would prefer to call Death Comes for the Archbishop a narrative as opposed to a novel. In terms of semantics a narrative is defined as "an account of events; anything that is narrated" (Holman 336). She is not necessarily wrong, but the book is certainly more than simply an account of events. A novel, on the other hand is defined as "any extended fictional narrative" (Holman 350). This definition would seem to apply to Death Comes for the Archbishop except that it is not an extended narrative, but a series of narratives.
Truthfully, one cannot read Cather's book as if it were a novel. There are many separate stories within; the Olivares, Buck Scales, Jacinto, Padre Martinez, and Friar Baltazar of Acoma who was dropped of a cliff. The stories are all held together by the common characters of Father Latour and Father Vaillant. There are also themes that run through most of the stories. The idea of justice seems to be important to the author as well as an important part of life in the southwest during this period. Maybe more important to the coherency of the book as a whole is the concept of loyalty. From the relationship of the boyhood friends who then become Catholic missionaries in America to the two cream-colored mules, Contento and Angelica, who "are always ridden together and have a great affection for each other" (Cather 60).
Our need for classification often leads to confusion, as in the case of Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. The book cannot be easily classified and cannot truly be called a novel. Many small and very interesting stories make up the book but there is not one comprehensive storyline. Possibly Cather is right in calling it simply a narrative.
Cynde Reese
A Narrative
Though many reviewers of Willa Cather's, Death Comes to the Archbishop, had difficulty classifying the book, Cather herself preferred to call it a narrative rather than a novel. I tend to agree with Cather. One definition from Webster's New World College Dictionary defines "narrative" as "a story", which is then defined as, "the telling of a happening or connected series of happenings, whether true or fictitious". A novel on the other hand is defined as having, "a more or less complex plot or pattern of events."
Where most books tend to follow certain guidelines as to plot, Cather chooses to take a different route. Trying to create a tale that involves clever plot twists, bizarre characters, a telling climax, and a fitting denouement, would detract from the simple story she is telling. It is the story of two French priests who have been sent to the American Southwest to rejuvenate the Catholic churches in that diocese, during the late 1800's. The southwest, during this time period, was harsh and unhurried, and its indigenous people lived simple, remarkable lives.
In keeping with the atmosphere of her story, the book is written almost as though her two main characters are keeping journals. The stories of Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant, who have adopted this rugged lifestyle, are told in little vignettes separated by chapters. Each vignette narrates a meaningful incident in their lives. I find it interesting that each chapter, or vignette, can stand on its own as an independent short story, yet it is woven together to create a tapestry of the Father's lives, with the people they meet and places they go tying it all together. Cather put it best when, in the book, she says, "Observing them thus in repose, in the act of reflection, Father Latour was thinking how each of these men not only had a story, but seemed to have become his story" (182).
This type of "narrative" writing gives believability to the people, and a sense of realism to the story. It also is in keeping with the pace of the land and its people. There was an unhurried tempo to the people and the land that had been there for hundred's of years. Each moved as slow as time would allow, in no hurry to accept change. A narrative type of writing fits this perfectly. The book is read with languor, appreciating each vignette for its simple revelation, rather than in haste looking for a climax.
Patrick Kelly
Why could we label Death Comes for the Archbishop a narrative?
Willa Cather describes for us not only about the changes in the lives of Father Vaillant and Father Latour, but also the changes in the American Southwest during the life of these two men. Her vivid descriptions and attention to small detail paints for us a strong impression of the southwest in the 1800's. I believe that she uses the landscape as the main character in Archbishop and that the work is really just a narration of the changes that occur to it in the span of one man's life.
During the course of the work, we meet various characters who interact with either Father Vaillant or Father Latour. It may be said that the novel is really a series of short stories during which the main character is unchanging except by the small influences of man upon it. These men and women become for us the focus of brief passages in Archbishop. Some of these characters actually lived, while other may simply be the work of Cather's imagination. However, all of them seem to be sharing the backdrop of the landscape during their interactions with Father Vaillant or Father Latour. This may be one point that would lead us to the idea that Cather uses the landscape as a sort of main character.
It may be said the that the Archbishop is a narration about the birth of the frontier. Cather seems to use the lives of two priests as a background to write of the changes that take place in New Mexico. This may be one reason that we could call Death Comes for the Archbishop a narrative.
Christine Furgason
Is it a narrative or a novel? Few questions have caused me this much trouble. It became apparent to me that Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop would not be an easy piece of literature to classify. Within just a few pages, it became apparent that this piece of literature is more than either category will allow. While reading the pages of this story I get the feeling that I am not reading a novel, rather it is a series of short stories. I understand why the critics claim that this is not a novel. While the chapters in each section seem to be connected, the sections themselves tend to be disconnected from each other. Each one is able to stand on its own.
It is not until I step back and reflect upon the novel that I can see the ties that bind the different sections together. This is not a story about Archbishop Jean Marie Latour, in the end I still do not know him. Rather, Willa Cather uses him as a vessel to display the world around him. It is through him that I learn about the people and places of New Mexico. It is through his eyes the beautiful landscape of the desert comes to life. I can see and smell the land in which he travels. I hear through his ears the legends that make the history of the land so important.
It is apparent to me that this is not a novel about an individual person, but about a place. The land and people of New Mexico are the storytellers. It is through them that this series of short stories are joined together into a novel. It is the story of these events that make up the narrative.
There is no way to simply classify Death Comes for the Archbishop. It is a novel, a narrative, and a series of short stories. It is simply, what you make of it.
Karrie Brown
Death Comes to the Archbishop could be asserted as something other than a novel. I believe that the stereotypical novel is more structured and rigid in refinement than Cather's example. I see that a strong plot cannot be identified and that the journal approach seems to be misleading. There really is not an antagonist, so in counterpart, there is no protagonist. A vehement argument against the structuring of this work could be made in favor of something other that a novel, but what. I don't view the classification as all that important when deciding to read this book. But as some scholars may tell you, a work without classification, needs more work. The structure in this 'novel' may be scattered, but it is still in a pattern that coheres the work and keeps it along a significant trail. In the title, the ending is given away, and the purpose of the book is all but lost. But in defense of the unusual title, it is more enticing than distracting, for it lures the reader in to find the answer of death. Could it be gruesome? Could it be murder? In the attempt to explain the title of the work, Cather puts together a loosely adhered series of narrative essays and forms a life story that is compelling and heartwarming. ("Four Stars," says the New York Times.)
I believe that Cather took some instruction from O'Connor in this statement. The definition that I sought in the Handbook to Literature, states that a novel designates a prose piece such as a fictional narrative, and that the characters can be so focused upon that exclusion of plot is possible. Cather knew this when she said that her 'novel' was a narrative, because that is what lots of novels are. Her loose linkage of time and character development are just different ways of approaching the order of the work. She does base her characters very closely to ones in real life, however, the characters are fictional. I don't think that she intended the scrutiny to fall upon the designation of the classification of her novel. I think a proper hashing of writing style would have been more appeasing to her on the critical aspect of her work.
Olivia Sprauve
I think that some possible reasons for this to not be considered a novel is that it is in fact almost like a narrative, even though it's in third person.
The story almost seems to be told by the two priests, almost through their eyes come the descriptions that fill this book. From the very beginning, when Father Latour says, "Mais, c'est fantastique!" (p.18), we as readers can see the desert from his eyes, and how beautiful it was.
I have had difficulty with the book however. I personally wonder if it's not considered a novel because readers struggled to find the exact plot and/or reason the book was written. I still have yet to find some sort of explanation of why Cather wants us to be reading this -- so in that sense, I can see why some would not classify it as a novel.
Cather said that she'd call it a narrative, and I can see her point of view. Because the majority of the piece revolves around the two priests, it is almost like they are telling their story. And within this book, is many other little stories as well -- when the characters in the novel tell their own narratives and anecdotes.
Gretchen Anthony
It is understandable that some early twentieth-century critics of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop said that the "'book is hard to classify,'" and "that it is not a novel" (On Writing 12). At that time, novels generally were written with a recognizable structure, with character development as a focus and chronology as a central organizational strategy (Harmon 350). In Death Comes for the Archbishop the central character's changes are subtle and relational, while the chronology sometimes seems random and unpredictable. Cather's preference to call her work "a narrative," a term usually contained within the definition of "a novel," does make sense, if only to distinguish her style in the minds of her readers.
Cather's main character, Archbishop Latour, does not change so much as come into clearer focus. It is as if her story begins with a picture of Latour through a blurry wide-angle lens. He is only a name in the prologue; he is denied authority when he first arrives in Santa Fe; he is traveling in foreign territory. Yet, through a series of vignettes, Latour's personality becomes more vivid and realized, like the landscape around him. Rather than major personal trans-formations or dramatic circumstances, we find that Latour becomes more of what we already thought he was.
Although a relatively solitary man, Latour is literarily never alone. Cather almost always sets her main character in relation to either another character or to the landscape. Comparisons of the scenery to that of other locales are made, but like the personality of the Latour himself, the landscape seems to develop its essence, as well. In a scene towards the end of the book when Latour is on one of his many journeys back to Santa Fe, we see a good example of this juxtaposition, "[t]he plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud" (DCA 231-2).
Cather points the fulfillment of her tale in her title. In the last section, titled just as the book itself, the Archbishop is "active in some other part of the great picture of his life" (Death Comes for the Archbishop 288). During his last days he was "done with calendared time," these words reflecting the arbitrary way in which memories are recalled, and the manner in which the book's minimal plot progresses. Time and place are free of their typical constraints.
Cather seems to choose her focus and invest her words carefully, sometimes leaving out large pieces of the narrative which from a traditional perspective seems strange. A good example of this is the building of Latour's cathedral. Although the planning of the cathedral project, from the stone to be used, the architects, and the style is given much attention, the accomplishment of it is not. Again, Cather defies the conventional notions of a novel, this time through her economy of words.
Superficially, the debate over whether to call Death Comes to the Archbishop should be called a novel or a narrative seems irrelevant, but a closer look at the text and the era in which it was published shows that Willa Cather was a ground breaking writer who took American literature at least one giant step into the future.
Katherine Newell
If someone felt compelled to classify Death Comes for the Archbishop as a type of novel, the most likely candidate would be a regional novel. Clearly, the setting and local color of this work make the region a critical component. However, before classifying the work as a type of novel, it must be determined whether it is a novel or, as Miss Cather has asserted, a narrative. Based on the structure and content of the book, it does not meet the classical definitions of novel and plot, so would lend itself more accurately to Miss Cather's classification.
The simplified definition of novel given in A Handbook to Literature is "an extended fictional PROSE narrative" (335). By this definition, Cather's book would qualify as a novel. But there is a great deal more to a novel than this definition implies. The handbook expands by stating: "some organizing principle-PLOT, THEME, or idea-should be present in a . . . a novel" (335). Cather's book has an idea - to illustrate the historical, regional and cultural context in which two European priests perform missionary work in the desert of the American Southwest in the last half of the nineteenth century. This idea does not constitute a plot.
Aristotle maintained that a plot should create a whole with "the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed" (Holman/Harmon 377). The structure of Death Comes for the Archbishop is made up of a series of episodes consisting of the experiences of two missionary priests, and legends of the region, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe. Would the whole become "disjointed or disturbed" if some of the stories or legends were removed or rearranged? No. The work would lose some of its richness, but the whole would not become incomprehensible.
I believe Willa Cather perceived this work as a narrative rather than a novel because it lacked what is traditionally considered a plot. The work's narrative form is reminiscent of a journal, and had it been written in the first person instead of third, it probably would have been classified as a journal narrative rather than a novel. The episodes that constitute the work do not rely on each other for the coherency of the whole, as would the episodes of a traditional plot form associated with most novels. In fact, some could almost stand on their own as short stories, such as "The Lonely Road to Mora". Yet under the skilled hand of Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop became not a novel, but a unified narrative of depth, color and beauty.
- Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon, eds. A Handbook to Literature. 5th
- ed. New York: Macmillan, 1986.
Danielle Shook
In a 1927 letter, Willa Cather wrote that her book, Death Comes for the Archbishop, that "many of the reviews of this book begin with the statement: 'This book is hard to classify.' Then why bother? Many more assert vehemently that it is not a novel. Myself, I prefer to call it a narrative." (On Writing 12).
The questions pertaining to whether or not it is a novel or why does Cather herself call it a "narrative" can be strange ones.
First, breaking down the question of if it was or wasn't a novel. According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, a novel means "a relatively long fictional prose narrative with a more or less complex plot or pattern of events, about actions, feelings, motives, etc. of a group of characters."
This definition of a novel pertains in every way to DCA, which leads the reader to question why would Cather say that it isn't a novel? Was she being sarcastic when she wrote this? In my opinion, the definition alone classifies DCA as a novel from the aspect that 1) it is a "relatively long fictional prose," 2) it has a complex plot and pattern of events about a group of characters.
However, if one was to look at Cather's view from another angle, one could see that DCA is not a novel through a variety of ways. One of these reasons is that DCA is broken down into ten "books" (including the prologue) ranging from 15-38 pages. When it is set up like this, the reader may interpret them to be read into a common day serial and take each "book" as a different story, even though Cather incorporates most of her characters throughout the book.
Another question that the reader must ask herself about DCA is why is it a narrative? For one, the reader is able to act as the narrator by putting herself in the story. Cather is brilliant at using explicit details and descriptions that make the reader feel as though she is getting a first-hand look at what is going on. In addition, Cather allows the reader to "hear" the conversations that go on through the narratives that she uses between characters.
In conclusion, I vehemently disagree with Cather in her comment that DCA is not a novel. Even coming up with ideas of how DCA is a narrative makes one hard pressed to think of ideas. Instead, I think that we are victims in this situation of Cather's insatiable sarcasm.
