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
Three weeks after Vaillant has returned to Santa Fé, he still cannot understand why Latour decided to call him back. One day, Latour and Vaillant take Contento and Angelica and head into the mountains. Latour leads Vaillant to a rocky yellow hill, different from the standard, forested green foothills. When Vaillant wonders why they have come, Latour explains that this yellow hill is the site he wants to build his cathedral on.
On the one hand, Latour’s desire to build a cathedral that mirrors the nature around it reflects his newfound care and respect for his environment. And on the other hand, he still wants to “assert” himself onto the landscape, preserving his legacy through construction, material wealth, and settlement.
Themes
Vaillant understands immediately: the hill reminds Latour of France and old, European churches, so different from the more modern buildings in Ohio. Latour reveals that he has found an architect, the son of an old friend from France, and that he has figured out a plan for sourcing stone. When Vaillant is surprised at all this planning, Latour apologizes: “I hope you do not think me very worldly.” But as the two men head home, Vaillant cannot help but marvel at Latour’s passion. After all, Vaillant also cares about the cathedral—“but whether it was Midi Romanesque or Ohio German in style, seemed to him of little consequence.”
Though Vaillant is the priest more likely to care about good food or delicious wine, Latour’s insistence on the particulars of the design of this church is (as, in fact, Vaillant privately seems to think) “very worldly.” If Latour was only concerned with finding new spaces to share his faith, the style of the church would likely not matter so much—but his obsession with the church’s appearance suggests that his own sense of ego and legacy is at stake here, too.
Themes
