Willa Cathers Death Comes for the Archbishop :: Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop 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.