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

Willa Cathers Death Comes to the Archbishop A chronicleThough many reviewers of Willa Cathers, Death Comes to the Archbishop, had difficulty classifying the book, Cather herself preferred to call it a narrative rather than a unused. I tend to agree with Cather. angiotensin-converting enzyme definition from Websters New World College Dictionary defines narrative as a yarn, 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 to a greater extent or less complex plot or pattern of events.Where approximately books tend to follow certain guidelines as to plot, Cather chooses to take a antithetic route. Trying to create a tale that involves clever plot twists, comical 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 Ameri tin southwestern to rejuvena te the Catholic churches in that diocese, during the late 1800s. The southwest, during this time period, was harsh and unhurried, and its innate people lived simple, remarkable lives. In safekeeping 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 pocket-size vignettes separated by chapters. Each vignette narrates a meaningful disaster in their lives. I find it interesting that each chapter, or vignette, can stand on its own as an independent short story, until now it is woven together to create a tapestry of the Fathers lives, with the people they set up and places they go tying it all together. Cather put it best when, in the book, she says, observe 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 run short his story (1 82).This type of narrative writing gives believability to the people, and a consciousness of realism to the story.