JHASS
Epidemic as Metaphor in Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider
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Abstract
Through the lens of Susan Sontag’s theory of illness as metaphor, this article examines Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1938) and argues that written in the 1930s, the Spanish flu in the novella serves not only as a symbol of the social devastation wrought by World War I but also as a reflection of the interwar social anxieties that foreshadowed the outbreak of World War II. First, the article examines how the novella employs disease as a metaphor for social instabilities during WWI, particularly in its portrayal of the pervasive atmosphere of death mirroring war casualties, the intertwining of Miranda’s illness with the worsening social conditions, and Adam’s ironic death from the flu instead of battle. Then, the article investigates how the epidemic serves as a metaphor for deeper societal maladies during interwar years, especially xenophobia, disillusionment, and isolation, that foreshadowed the onset of World War II. The article concludes that this dual significance further illuminates the novella’s importance among disease narratives in American literary history.
References
Chakravertty, T. (2023). The trauma and the triumph: Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”. In N. Pulugurtha (Ed.), Literary representations of pandemics, epidemics and pestilence (pp. 32-42). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003294436-4
Crosby, A. W. (2003). America’s forgotten pandemic: The influenza of 1918 (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511586576
Davis, D. A. (2011). The forgotten apocalypse: Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider,’ traumatic memory, and the influenza pandemic of 1918. The Southern Literary Journal, 43(2), 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1353/slj.2011.0007
Givner, J. (Ed.). (1987). Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations. University Press of Mississippi.
Overy, R., & Wheatcroft, A. (2009). The road to war. Vintage Books.
Porter, K. A. (1979). Pale horse, pale rider. In The collected stories of Katherine Anne Porter (pp. 269-317). A Harvest/HBJ Book. (Original work published 1938)
Porter, K. A. (1990). Letters of Katherine Anne Porter. (I. Bayle, Ed.). Atlantic.
Sontag, S. (2001). Illness as metaphor (Original work published 1978) and AIDS and its metaphors. Picador. (Original work published 1989)
Taylor, M. B. (2020, May 18). Katherine Anne Porter’s pandemic. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/katherine-anne-porters-pandemic/
Woolf, V. (2022). On being ill. Renard Press. (Original work published 1926)
How to cite this paper
Epidemic as Metaphor in Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider
How to cite this paper: Hui Lyu. (2025) Epidemic as Metaphor in Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 9(2), 320-325.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2025.02.018
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