Dave’s review of Death Comes for the Archbishop > Likes and Comments
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Dave, the quote you open your review with is truly striking: 'I shall not die of a cold.. I shall die of having lived'. What a magnificent and at the same time heavy, kind of acceptance. Approaching the book through the lens of your own family history and church memory turns your review from a simple critique into something closer to a moral reckoning. Your willingness to address the complexity of missionary history—both as a search for goodness and as an inevitable form of cultural destruction—is very courageous. When combined with your references to Steinbeck and Wilder, the story begins to take on the shape of a moral allegory in my mind. The question 'Whose land is it?' feels not only historical, but almost like a cry about the ownership of the soul itself. Reading Cather’s honesty through your sincere perspective was a real pleasure, and it brought me one step closer to Cather’s world. Thank you!
What an amazing response, Pia, thanks. Cather is a good person and author; she finds the good in the Archbishop even as she admits that missionary work advanced the colonialist project. I try to do the same with the missionaries in my family and former church, whom I admire as well-intentioned people, loving people wanting to do good in the world, even as I might contest some aspects of the nature of the enterprise. I do think Cather is a very fine author. Most people think of this as her masterpiece. See other reviews that were passionate about it.
I would place Willa Cather two notches above America’s Holy Trinity of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner.
I too loved the quote that you open with, what a great way to percieve death!
Why do you think that she focuses on Catholicism, I didn't think that she was Catholic? Perhaps she was, or became so in the course of her life? Or wa it simply that in her writing about the west that she moved from north to south during her career and Catholicism sinply was a more important part of the south-west than of the north-west?
David wrote: "I would place Willa Cather two notches above America’s Holy Trinity of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner."
Well, now, them're fightin' words, David. But she has so many fine books, one of the greatest, without question.
Jan-Maat wrote: "I too loved the quote that you open with, what a great way to percieve death!
Why do you think that she focuses on Catholicism, I didn't think that she was Catholic? Perhaps she was, or became so ..."
She was indeed not a Catholic, and a couple of her boks seem to lionize Catholicism. She was a Christitan, but a Protestant. Methofist, I tthink. I read somewhere that she said she believed there was ONE God and Only One God, by which I take it she meant (contrary to one implication) that all she valued all religions for some common element, that e might honor some of the same principles even if we embraced other religions. Ecumenicity. In this book she through the Archbishop honors many Indigernous, nature-honoring beliefs. These may not have fundamentally changed how Christianity did then or continues to view the world, as something to serve Men. Bur Christian missionaries (I think at this moment of Bogart and Bacall in The African Queen with the absurd missionary scenes) have one central purpose: To make the locals believe what they believe. The idea is that we are called by God to save as many souls as we can, that's our invocation: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and Thou Shalt Be Saved. That doesn't allow for diversity of beliefs unless you take Cather's vague idea of God/Jesus as a God With Many Faces. Maybe she thinks that, not sure. But that phrase from the Bible means the Christian God for most Christians.
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Pia G.
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Apr 28, 2026 11:46PM
Dave, the quote you open your review with is truly striking: 'I shall not die of a cold.. I shall die of having lived'. What a magnificent and at the same time heavy, kind of acceptance. Approaching the book through the lens of your own family history and church memory turns your review from a simple critique into something closer to a moral reckoning. Your willingness to address the complexity of missionary history—both as a search for goodness and as an inevitable form of cultural destruction—is very courageous. When combined with your references to Steinbeck and Wilder, the story begins to take on the shape of a moral allegory in my mind. The question 'Whose land is it?' feels not only historical, but almost like a cry about the ownership of the soul itself. Reading Cather’s honesty through your sincere perspective was a real pleasure, and it brought me one step closer to Cather’s world. Thank you!
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What an amazing response, Pia, thanks. Cather is a good person and author; she finds the good in the Archbishop even as she admits that missionary work advanced the colonialist project. I try to do the same with the missionaries in my family and former church, whom I admire as well-intentioned people, loving people wanting to do good in the world, even as I might contest some aspects of the nature of the enterprise. I do think Cather is a very fine author. Most people think of this as her masterpiece. See other reviews that were passionate about it.
I would place Willa Cather two notches above America’s Holy Trinity of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner.
I too loved the quote that you open with, what a great way to percieve death!Why do you think that she focuses on Catholicism, I didn't think that she was Catholic? Perhaps she was, or became so in the course of her life? Or wa it simply that in her writing about the west that she moved from north to south during her career and Catholicism sinply was a more important part of the south-west than of the north-west?
David wrote: "I would place Willa Cather two notches above America’s Holy Trinity of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner."Well, now, them're fightin' words, David. But she has so many fine books, one of the greatest, without question.
Jan-Maat wrote: "I too loved the quote that you open with, what a great way to percieve death!Why do you think that she focuses on Catholicism, I didn't think that she was Catholic? Perhaps she was, or became so ..."
She was indeed not a Catholic, and a couple of her boks seem to lionize Catholicism. She was a Christitan, but a Protestant. Methofist, I tthink. I read somewhere that she said she believed there was ONE God and Only One God, by which I take it she meant (contrary to one implication) that all she valued all religions for some common element, that e might honor some of the same principles even if we embraced other religions. Ecumenicity. In this book she through the Archbishop honors many Indigernous, nature-honoring beliefs. These may not have fundamentally changed how Christianity did then or continues to view the world, as something to serve Men. Bur Christian missionaries (I think at this moment of Bogart and Bacall in The African Queen with the absurd missionary scenes) have one central purpose: To make the locals believe what they believe. The idea is that we are called by God to save as many souls as we can, that's our invocation: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and Thou Shalt Be Saved. That doesn't allow for diversity of beliefs unless you take Cather's vague idea of God/Jesus as a God With Many Faces. Maybe she thinks that, not sure. But that phrase from the Bible means the Christian God for most Christians.
