SOURCE: "The Dreams Self in 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider,'" in Wascana Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Fall, 1979, pp. 61-79.

In the following essay, Walsh explores the significance of Miranda's dreams in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," noting allusions to fear of death and the author's own personal experiences.

Deriving its title from an old spiritual, Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" tells how Death carries off Adam, "a sacrificial lamb" who is "committed without any knowledge or act of his own to death," leaving Miranda the "one singer to mourn." Therefore some critics have read the story as a tragedy of circumstances in which war and disease doom its star-crossed lovers. Wayne Booth writes that the reader is united with Miranda "against the hostile world around her" as she travels "alone toward the discovery that the man she loves has died." He also stresses her "moral superiority": "She must...