Willa Cathers Death Comes to the Archbishop: A Narrative :: Willa Cathers Death Comes to the Archbishop

Willa Cathers Death Comes to the Archbishop A NarrativeThough many reviewers of Willa Cathers, Death Comes to the Archbishop, had clog classifying the book, Cather herself preferred to call it a narrative rather than a novel. I tend to agree with Cather. One definition from Websters New World College lexicon defines narrative as a story, which is then delimit as, the revealing 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 patch 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 chronicle that involves clever plot twists, bizarre char executeers, a telling climax, and a alteration denouement, would detract from the simple story she is telling. It is the story of 2 French priests who father been sent to the American Southwest to rejuvenate the Catholic churches in that diocese, durin g the young 1800s. The southwest, during this time period, was harsh and unhurried, and its indigenous people lived simple, remarkable lives. In guardianship 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 low lifestyle, are told in little resumes separated by chapters. Each vignette narrates a meaningful incident in their lives. I find it raise 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 Fathers lives, with the people they meet and places they go tying it all together. Cather range 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 written material gives believability t o the people, and a sense of realism to the story.