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

Willa Cathers Death Comes for the Archbishop Novel and NarrativeI found these definitions at an online head to free online dictionaries principal(prenominal) Entry narrativePronunciation nar-&-tivFunction nounDate 1566 1 something that is narrated STORY2 the art or practice of narration3 the representation in art of an event or story also an example of such a representation- narrative adjective- narratively adverb Main Entry novelFunction nounEtymology Italian novellaDate 1639 1 an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through and through a usually connected sequence of events2 the literary genre consisting of novels- novelistic /n-v&-lis-tik/ adjective- novelistically /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb Main Entry novelPronunciation n-v&lFunction adjectiveEtymology Middle English, from Middle French, new, from Latin novellus, from diminutive of novus new -- more at NEWDate 15th coke1 new and not resembling something formerly known or used2 original or striking especially in conception or style <a novel scheme to collect money I think that one of the hardest problems in distinguishing novel from narrative in DCA is, first of all, distinguishing between the price novel and narrative themselves. A narrative seems to be, well, something that is told as a story, or at least being caught in the act of telling one of those stories. A novel seems to be, wait a minute, a narrative? What am I supposed to infer from that? Is this the sound of one hand clapping, Confucius laughing? Have I have been duped?As far as I can tell, all dictionary definitions and joking aside, Death Comes For the Archbishop is a solid mix of both prose and narrative, magnetic inclination a little heavier on the narrative side. Cather does explore her characters humanity, following them and tugging the reader along from event to event, but we, the readers, only get the perspective of the fly on the wall at least, a shallow reading of the characters feelings and emotions at best. We are never invited deep into the minds of her constructs as we are in most novels. What Cather does do, though, is create an artistic rendering of the characters and the world that they live in. The reader can, with just a little imagination, see the heat shimmer off the desert, feel the sun beat passel on them they can create, from the general descriptions, characters of flesh and blood. The reader is given a series of snapshots, taken at different times, with nothing substantial to fill in the gapsthis separates it from the dictionary definition of the novel which follows, usually, a thicker chronology of the characters lives.