Catharine's Death

In The Surrounded Catharine’s death scene presents an unusual power play between this dying old woman and Father Jerome.  Her renunciation of the Christian faith on her deathbed does not go over well with the priest.  His insistence upon performing Christian rituals is incredibly disrespectful, but it makes me wonder why he chose to do so against her wishes.  There is the aspect of wanting her to go to heaven, coming from a place of caring, but Father Jerome’s anger hints that it comes from a different place.  He is very angry.  He takes personal offense to Catherine’s return to Salish religious culture.  I think this feeling is exacerbated in him because when he arrives, she is already at a place where she cannot respond to him.  She renounced her faith without him there, and now there’s nothing he can do to change her, and this upsets him.  She was the great success story, so a failure in her was a slap in the face.  She represents the failure of missionaries, and the futility of their reach to this other culture.