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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Performance of Patriotism
Alienation
The Denial of Death
The Pain of Living
Summary
Analysis
In her dream, Miranda lies in a bed that she knows, somehow, is hers. The bed is in a house with which she is also familiar: “Too many people have been born here,” she thinks, “and have wept too much here, and have laughed too much, and have been too angry and outrageous with each other here.”
Porter’s choice to begin the story in a dream foreshadows the important role dreams play in “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” That Miranda wakes up in a familiar bed in a familiar house implies that the content of her dream is relevant to her life—that the dream broaches real problems or concerns Miranda is dealing with in her conscious life.
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Miranda’s thoughts turn to her memory of a “lank greenish stranger […] hanging around the place, welcomed by “my grandfather, my great-aunt, my five times removed cousin, my decrepit hound and my silver kitten.” She wonders where the stranger is now, noting that she saw “him” outside her window that evening.
It becomes apparent as the story unfolds that the stranger is meant to represent death. Porter hints at this with the sequence of people and animals from Miranda’s past. When Miranda observes that the stranger had been metaphorically “welcomed by” these characters, the implication is that they are people who have died.
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Still in her dream, Miranda pulls herself out of bed to embark on a mysterious journey “to outrun Death and the Devil.” She considers which horse to take: Graylie, Fiddler, or Miss Lucy. She settles on Graylie, “because he is not afraid of bridges.”
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Miranda and Graylie head out. The mysterious stranger Miranda recalled earlier materializes, riding off beside her on his own gray horse. The stranger has a “pale face” that is fixed in “an evil trance.” As Miranda looks more closely at the stranger, she realizes that she has seen him before: “He is no stranger to me.”
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Miranda wakes from sleep and immediately recalls the reality of her conscious life: “A single word struck in her mind, a gong of warning […] the war, said the gong.” She worries about the war and her own financial anxieties as she readies herself for work.
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Miranda reflects back to the previous day: she arrives at the newspaper office where she works as a drama critic to find two men waiting impatiently before her desk. She describes the men as “too well nourished,” and with “a stale air of borrowed importance” about them. Miranda observes that the older man “might be anything at all, […] any follower of any one of the crafty, haphazard callings.” The men are Lusk Committeemen, temporary government men hired to make sure citizens remain loyal to the US. The men bully Miranda, questioning why she hasn’t yet bought a Liberty Bond. “With our American boys fighting and dying in Belleau Wood,” they argue, “anybody can raise fifty dollars to help beat the Boche.”
The committeemen insist that Miranda is the only employee in her office who’s yet to purchase a bond. Still, Miranda refuses, fuming inwardly: “Suppose I said to hell with this filthy war?” she thinks, “Suppose I asked that little thug, What’s the matter with you, why aren’t you rotting in Belleau Wood?”
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Back in the present, Miranda takes a bath, and “wish[s] she might fall asleep there, to wake up only when it was time to sleep again.” She has a headache and searches for its origins. She recalls what happened yesterday at work after the committeemen left. She and her friend Mary Townsend (nicknamed Towney) fret about not being able to afford Liberty Bonds. They wonder if they’ll be fired or thrown in jail. Miranda remarks wryly that if they were thrown in jail, at least they’d “catch up on [their] sleep.”
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After commiserating with Towney, Miranda heads out to fulfill her volunteering duties. She reflects on the overwhelming presence of wartime good deeds. Miranda is critical of it all, describing her fellow volunteers as the “young women fresh from the country club dances […] wallowing in good works.” These women, reveals Miranda, “gave tea dances and raised money […] bought quantities of sweets, fruit, cigarettes, and magazines for the men in the cantonment hospitals.” Miranda sets herself apart from these young, cheery girls; she is not “fresh from the country club dances.” She hates these forced acts of patriotism and finds them terribly uncomfortable.
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Miranda, carrying a bouquet of flowers, pushes through the women “uttering girlish laughter meant to be refreshingly gay” and makes her way into the hospital. She observes the injured soldiers “picturesquely bandaged” in neat rows of beds. Miranda approaches a young soldier with an “unfriendly bitter eye.” He doesn’t seem to want Miranda’s company. Miranda sits with him briefly, places the flowers she’s brought with her on his bed, and leaves. On her way out she passes a tired-looking girl and laments, “I hate it.”
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The story shifts back to the present, after Miranda has finished her bath. Yesterday—the committeemen’s harassment, the uncomfortable volunteering—was decidedly gloomy, she observes, except for “the hour after midnight she had spent dancing with Adam.” Miranda reveals that she thinks of Adam, a soldier who’s recently moved into her building, constantly. As she thinks about Adam, Miranda studies her reflection in the mirror and notes that “her uneasiness was not all imagination.” Looking in the mirror confirms that the headache and tiredness Miranda’s suffered from the past few days are real, physical problems.
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To her surprise, Miranda finds Adam waiting in the hallway outside her apartment. “I don’t have to go back to camp today after all,” he informs her. Miranda is pleased. They spend the afternoon together and head out to lunch. Adam is “all olive and tan and tawny, hay colored and sand colored from hair to boots, […] tall and heavily muscled in the shoulders.” His soldier’s uniform, he admits, is made by the best tailor he could find.
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The couple talks and smokes as they walk. Adam smokes nonstop despite his knowledge of the health concerns of smoking. “But,” he argues, “does it matter so much if you’re going to war, anyway?” Adam and Miranda discuss other health concerns: “This funny new disease,” remarks Adam. “It seems to be a plague,” replies Miranda. “Did you ever see so many funerals, ever?” A funeral procession drives by. Miranda and Adam walk into a drugstore for lunch.
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Over lunch, Miranda tells Adam that she “feel[s] too rotten. It can’t just be the weather, and the war.” Adam only vaguely responds to Miranda’s concern, focusing his attention, instead, on the ongoing war. To Adam, the war is “simply too good to be true.” He talks about his training, learning to use the bayonet, and crawling around. Miranda worries some more about her health, and tells Adam that she’d “like to run away.” The couple makes plans yet also anguish over Adam’s leave, which is “nearly up.”
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It’s nearly time for Miranda to return to work, so the couple part ways “until tonight.” Miranda turns around as she leaves Adam, explaining that “she could not help turning sometimes for one glimpse more of the person she had been talking with, as if that would save too rude and too sudden a snapping of even the lightest bond.”
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At work, Miranda hangs out with her coworkers, Towney, and Chuck Rouncivale, the sports reporter. They discuss the influenza outbreak. Miranda daydreams about Adam, recalling when she first seen him 10 days ago. Though they’ve only known each other for a little under two weeks, they’ve already visited a museum, gone dancing, and driven out to the mountains.
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Miranda’s daydreaming is interrupted when her friends’ conversation moves on to wartime concerns. Towney believes that everybody should do their duty and help the wounded soldiers, “even if they don’t want us.” Miranda knows that this is only talk, however—Towney could care less about any of this. Chuck speaks rashly: “What’s the idea of petting soldiers and binding up their wounds and soothing their fevered brows? That’s not war. Let ‘em perish where they fall.” Towney rolls her eyes at Chuck, who clearly isn’t off fighting and perishing, himself. Chuck becomes defensive, citing his bad lung.
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Later, Miranda and Chuck head to a vaudeville show that Miranda is assigned to cover for work. Chuck warns Miranda that a has-been actor whom Miranda reviewed poorly might be waiting outside the theater to confront her. Sure enough, there he is. The actor tells Miranda, “if [she] was a man [he’d] knock [her] block off.” The man is silly and forgettable, yet Miranda is troubled that she hurt someone.
The show begins. Chuck declares it to be “rotten.” Miranda feels rotten, herself: she tells Chuck he can write up the review of the show himself, as she’s “getting ready to leave [the newspaper.]” Miranda then revisits the anxieties she’d expressed earlier to Adam, as she thinks to herself, “Something terrible is going to happen to me.”
Miranda and Chuck leave the horrendous show. As they pass through the bustling crowd outside the theater, Miranda thinks, “What did I ever know about them? There must be a great many of them here who think as I do, and we dare not say a word to each other of our desperation, we are speechless animals letting ourselves be destroyed, and why? Does anybody here believe the things we say to each other?”
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Miranda waits in the cloakroom for Adam to arrive and daydreams: “there was nothing to think about him, after all. There was only the wish to see him and the fear, the present threat, of not seeing him again.” She also thinks, “I don’t want to love […] not Adam, there is no time, and we are not ready for it and yet this is all we have—” Her thoughts are interrupted when Adam materializes in front of her. They decide to eat and go dancing after they see a show.
The show they see is horrible, but Miranda and Adam enjoy one another’s company. Before the third act can begin, the curtain rises and gives way to “a backdrop almost covered with an American flag improperly and disrespectfully exposed, nailed at each upper corner, gathered in the middle and nailed again, sagging dustily.” A bond salesman appears onstage and proceeds to give a speech about the importance of buying Liberty Bonds. “Looks like a penguin,” says Adam. “Oh, why won’t he hush,” whispers Miranda. After the man delivers his clichéd and theatrical speech, the audience stands and sings “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-winding” together. Miranda and Adam join in.
After they’ve exited the theater, Miranda calls the bond salesman “Just another nasty old man who would like to see the young ones killed.” Adam is more sympathetic to the salesman, though, asking, “What could you expect of him, Miranda?” Miranda responds, cryptically, that “the worst of war is the fear and suspicion and the awful expression in all the eyes you meet…as if they had pulled down the shutters over their minds and their hearts and were peering out at you, ready to leap if you make one gesture or say one word they do not understand instantly.”
Later that night, Adam and Miranda sit at a table listening to a jazz orchestra play at a club. Adam suggests they dance. Miranda accepts, though somewhat reluctantly—what she really wants is to tell Adam how sick she feels. But she doesn’t want to ruin this night they have together, so she ignores her anxieties and allows herself to dance with him.
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While they are dancing, Miranda notices a couple sitting at a corner table. The girl cries and the boy takes her hands in his and kisses them. Miranda “envie[s] the girl,” that she could “weep […] and he does not even have to ask, What is the matter?” Miranda then eavesdrops on another young couple’s conversation.
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Later, Miranda wakes up in bed knowing somehow that she’s “been asleep for a long time.” Adam appears before her. He reveals that he’s been “called back suddenly to camp.” He called Miranda’s work and her apartment building and learned from Miss Hobbe that Miranda was sick in bed.
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Miranda tells Adam what she can recall of the hazy recent events: she called in sick to work. Bill, the city editor, had arranged for her to take a sick leave and for a doctor to visit her. The doctor tapped her chest and gave her medicine. In the present, Adam finds said medicine and runs out to the pharmacy to get a refill.
Miranda contemplates what the illness means for her. She hallucinates, reflects on memories, and thinks about dying. Adam returns with Miranda’s medicine. Miranda runs into Miss Hobbe in the hallway and tells her she might have influenza. Miss Hobbe insists that Miranda go to a hospital or she’ll kick her out of her building. Adam cares for Miranda. They sit together drinking coffee and try to sing to pass the time.
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Adam and Miranda both vaguely remember the song “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” They sing what they can remember of its 40 verses, in which “the rider done taken away mammy, pappy, brother, sister, the whole family besides the lover—” Miranda interrupts Adam to point out that not everybody has been taken away: “But not the singer, not yet […] Death always leaves on singer to mourn.”
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Miranda tells Adam that she loves him. Adam admits that he loves Miranda, too. Hearing these words aloud for the first time, Miranda observes that “the cloud cleared and she saw his face for an instant.”
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After this dizzying exchange, Miranda “float[s] into the darkness” into sleep. She dreams that Adam is in a small wood “full of inhuman concealed voices singing sharply like the whine of arrows.” Adam is “transfixed” by the arrows, and they pierce him through his heart. Adam falls but rises up, alive and unharmed “in a perpetual death and resurrection.” Miranda cries angrily: “It’s my turn now, why must you always be the one to die?” The arrows strike Miranda and she lives; they strike Adam and he dies.
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Miranda wakes up and Adam is again by her side. He consoles her but shushes her as she tries to tell the details of her dream. They say goodbye as Adam leaves to get them ice cream and coffee. On his way out, Adam tells Miranda to “be very quiet.”
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The next time Miranda regains consciousness, she is in the hospital and Adam is nowhere to be found. As Miranda dips in and out of consciousness, she repeatedly inquires about Adam. Hildesheim, the doctor who cares for her, tells her that Adam came to visit her and left a note. The nurse, Miss Tanner, reads the note because Miranda cannot see straight. The note reveals that Adam tried to visit Miranda but they would not let them see her.
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Miranda reflects on the hospital setting: noting its blinding, disorienting white walls, white beds, white sheets, doctors and nurses dressed all in white: “What is this whiteness and silence,” Miranda wonders, “but the absence of pain?” Feverishly, she looks on as two hospital workers, whom she describes as “executioners,” push a man down the hall on a hospital gurney. The man, “in a high weeping voice,” proclaims “that the crime of which he was accused did not merit the punishment he was about to receive.” But the men do not remit, and they continue on their way.
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Miranda continues to hallucinate, imagining Dr. Hildesheim to be a German soldier. In one hand Hildesheim holds an infant skewered on the end of a bayonet; in the other, he grasps a “stone pot marked Poison.” Terrified, Miranda Shrieks: “Dr Hildesheim is a Boche!”
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Miranda dips deeper into her hallucinations, and this time she dreams of death and oblivion. She imagines “a whirlpool of gray water turning upon itself for all eternity.” Eternity is “more than the distance to the farthest star,” she thinks. She imagines herself at the edge of a bottomless pit, “strain[ing] her back against a reassuring wall of granite.”
But, Miranda realizes, “granite walls, whirlpools, stars are things. None of them is death, nor the image of it. Death is death, […] and for the dead it has no attributes.” Miranda falls deeper into darkness and unconsciousness. She feels herself falling and feels “a minute fiercely burning particle of being” that thrusts her body upwards into the light. This single particle—the instinctual will to live—draws her there. The particle grows and turns into a rainbow, and the scene turns from darkness to light. She rises from the edge of the pit and runs into the light, into “the burning blue of the sea and the cool green of the meadow.”
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In this utopic scene, Miranda feels the presence of other humans whom she recognizes as people she knows: “their eyes were clear and untroubled […] they were pure identities and she knew them every one without calling their names or remembering what relation she bore to them.”
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Miranda’s pure joy is shattered by “a vague tremor of apprehension.” She recognizes these familiar human presences as people who have died. “Where are the dead?” she wonders. “We have forgotten the dead, oh, the dead, where are they?” Miranda feels a sudden pain as Miss Tanner administers an injection to her arm, and she regains consciousness.
Once more, Miranda awakes in her hospital room. She hears noises, voices, and commotion. Miss Tanner tells her that the war is over as joyful voices outside sing “My country, ‘tis of thee.” But Miranda is not so joyful. “Sweet land…oh, terrible land,” she thinks, “of this bitter world where the sound of rejoicing was a clamor of pain.”
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Miranda realizes she should be grateful to be alive, but she is not. The utopia she had just seen in her hallucinations has dulled the world of the living. Around her, everyone “seem[s] dull and tired, with no radiance of skin and eyes,” and “the white walls of her room were now a soiled gray.”
Chuck and Towney visit Miranda and bring letters from well-wishing friends. They exclaim how wonderful Miranda must feel to be well again. Miranda disagrees, but knows she can only smile, nod, and respond agreeably to these letters, “for it will not do to betray the conspiracy and tamper with the courage of the living.” In a letter from a strange man who was at a camp with Adam, Miranda learns that Adam died of influenza over a month ago.
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Miranda prepares to leave the hospital. She tries to summon forth Adam’s image before her eyes. Though she can feel his overwhelming presence, she fails to summon forth his image; around her, the hospital room remains empty. Miranda prepares to leave and reflects on the end of her sickness, the end of the war, and the end of her love: “Now there would be time for everything,” she realizes, dolefully.
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