SOURCE: “One Singer Left to Mourn: Death and Discourse in Porter's ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider,’” in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter, 1996, pp. 55–76.

In the following essay, Ciuba analyzes the roles of mourning and death in Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider.

Like all of Katherine Anne Porter's fiction, Pale Horse, Pale Rider is underwritten by bereavement. As Miranda Rhea, Porter's quasi-autobiographical surrogate, lies dying, she voices this pervasive grief when she fitfully remembers the spiritual that provides the title for the short novel. “‘Pale horse, pale rider, done taken my lover away …’” Miranda whispers hoarsely to Adam, the beloved who will eventually be taken away from her by the apocalyptic horseman of the lament. “‘Do you know that song?’” (240) As they together try to recall its stanzas, Adam remembers that in the spiritual's over-forty verses “‘the rider done taken away mammy, pappy, brother, sister, the whole family besides...