Father Latour is a French-speaking man who has moved to a Spanish-speaking part of the English-speaking United States. And did we mention that most of the people in New Mexico are Native Americans who speak Navajo and Hopi? So you can bet that language barriers come up quite a lot in Death Comes for the Archbishop. Death, muerte, and mort all come for this Archbishop.
By the end of the story, both Latour and his buddy Vaillant are fluent in French, English, and Spanish, but they still need to rely on translators and guides to help them communicate with the Native American peoples. This, of course, leads to lots of questions about just how well they can understand the traditional views and beliefs of people in New Mexico.
Questions About Language and Communication
- Why do the Catholic officials send Father Latour to take over the diocese in New Mexico—what's wrong with the Spanish-speaking Mexican priests who are already there?
- How does Father Latour respond when his Native American guide Jacinto tells him things about traditional Native American customs? Does Latour have a good or a poor understanding of these things? Why?
- What language does Latour slip into speaking in the final moments before his death? Why do you think this is?
Chew on This
In Death Comes for the Archbishop, communication barriers symbolize how European colonizers can never fully understand the Native peoples of North America.
In Death Comes for the Archbishop, we learn that people's languages don't really matter because human nature is universal.