Pale Horse, Pale Rider: A Modern Allegory of an Encounter with Death

• Authors: Navdeep Kahol

Abstracts

EN

The novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider, authored by Katherine Anne Porter and published in 1939, is set against the backdrop of the 1918–1919 Spanish flu pandemic towards the end of World War I. It narrates the dual story of individual and societal trauma and survival amidst the pandemic, contributing to the cultural memory of that era in American history. The narrative draws heavily on autobiographical elements, with the protagonist Miranda’s experiences closely reflecting Porter’s own. As Miranda battles a life-threatening flu, her delirious mind traverses past, present, and future, blurring the boundaries between them. This paper examines Porter’s employment of modernist techniques such as dreams, visions, archetypes, biblical allusions, and stream of consciousness to articulate Miranda’s harrowing yet transformative passage through a liminal space between life and death. Porter’s novelistic approach is distinctly modern in its exploration of mortality and the portrayal of Miranda’s near-death experience, aligning her with modernist contemporaries like T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, who also eschewed traditional literary forms to depict the profound dislocations of their time. The enduring appeal of Pale Horse, Pale Rider lies in its rich symbolism and psychological depth in addressing themes of death and illness.

Keywords

EN

Spanish flu; modernism; pandemic; symbolism; dream; death; war

• Publisher: University of Silesia Press
• Journal: Review of International American Studies
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 105-118

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Navdeep Kahol

• Government College, Dera Bassi, Punjab

• https://orcid.org/0009000374902680

References

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• Porter, Katherine Anne. “Katherine Anne Porter: An Interview.” Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter. Edited by Barbara Thompson, University Press of Mississippi, 1987, pp. 78–98.
• Unrue, Darlene Harbour. Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction. University of Georgia Press, 1985.
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Identifiers

DOI

10.31261/rias.15420

Biblioteka Nauki

35193243