How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The difficulty was that the country in which he found himself was so featureless—or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly alike. (1.1.1)
Father Latour finds New Mexico a really hard place to travel at first because everything looks the same to him. Every rock looks like every other rock, and it's impossible for him to tell which landmarks he has already passed.
Quote #2
Running water, clover fields, cottonwoods, acacias, little adobe houses with brilliant gardens, a boy driving a flock of white goats toward the stream,—that was what the young Bishop saw. (1.1.20)
Once he has escaped death from thirst and met a nice family, Father Latour suddenly changes his opinions about the New Mexico landscape and decides that it's actually really beautiful. It's funny how having a nice meal and a glass of water can turn your mood right around.
Quote #3
It was like a country of dry ashes; no juniper, no rabbit brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus, and patches of wild pumpkin—the only vegetation that had any vitality. (3.2.1)
There isn't a whole lot of stuff that can grow in New Mexico apart from only the heartiest of plants. And you can take this as a metaphor for humans, too. In other words, only a tough sort of person can live in a place like New Mexico and really thrive.
Quote #4
In all his travels the Bishop had seen no country like this. From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals. (3.3.1)
Latour has never seen anything like the landscape of New Mexico. But notice here how he tries to make the unfamiliar seem more familiar by comparing the rocks to "vast cathedrals." Here, we see a good example of how the human mind will always try to convert new information into familiar terms. The only problem is that New Mexico is so, so foreign that Latour has to really struggle to make some of these comparisons.
Quote #5
Something reptilian he felt here, something that had endured by immobility, a kind of life out of reach, like the crustaceans in their armour. (3.3.28)
It's not just the landscape of New Mexico that confuses Father Latour, but the people who have always lived there, too. He can't help but feel as though there's some hidden force in these people that he'll never really understand. Which makes sense, really, considering that this culture is way different from anything that the European Latour has ever seen.
Quote #6
When this strange yellow boy played it, there was softness and languor in the wire strings—but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt and followed in one way or another. (6.1.14)
When he hears a boy playing the banjo, Latour once again can feel himself in a strange land with strange customs. There's something about the plinking sounds of the banjo that captures the giddy, half-crazy beauty of New Mexico.
Quote #7
When Father Latour thinks of New Mexico, he feels like all of nature is intertwined. He can see the sky in the grass and can smell the earth in the wind. All in all, he gets a sort of spiritual fulfillment from feeling so close to the natural landscape.
Quote #8
This house was so frail a shelter that one seemed to be sitting in the heart of a world made of dusty earth and moving air. (7.3.28)
Back in Europe, there are all kinds of castles and big manors to keep out the heat and the cold. But in New Mexico, Father Latour learns that nearly every house is little more than a thin shell. He takes this as a symbol of the fact that the people living in this area are much less removed from nature than Europeans are.
Quote #9
Travelling with Eusabio was like travelling with the landscape made human. He accepted chance and weather as the country did, with a sort of grave enjoyment. (7.4.8)
Eusabio has deep connections to the Navajo people, which Father Latour interprets as a deep connection to the New Mexico landscape as well. Unlike white settlers, who try to control nature, the people of New Mexico tend to accept whatever nature throws their way and to deal with it however they can.
Quote #10
"Setting […] is accidental. Either a building is part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger." (9.2.16)
Father Latour hires a young architect from Europe to come to New Mexico and design a Cathedral for the town of Santa Fe. It's actually the young architect who has to explain to Latour that a building has to become a part of its surroundings in order to become great, and this is something that can only be accomplished when a building stands for a long time. It's as if the building and the landscape need to get used to each other.