Pale Horse, Pale Rider

“I suppose I can make it. I suppose I should be worried. I am worried.”

Miranda is on the precipice of concern. Her life hangs in a fragile balance, between her sense of exhaustion, her unpaid bills, and her commitment to Adam. Despite these numerous problems in her life, she tries to assure herself that she’s fine. She repeats these phrases like a mantra, compelling herself to feel something other than nihilistic dread. She settles upon worry as an emotion—but only after convincing herself that this is how she should feel.

“But he was now all Patriot, working for the government.”

Miranda’s cynicism draws a fine line between patriot and villain. The people who speak most loudly about patriotism are those who cause her the most worry. Even the government has been corrupted by this discourse, illustrating the transformational power of the war. Neither Miranda nor anyone else is simply allowed to exist in society. They must be patriotic at all times.

“I’m making this for myself. That’s that.”

Towney knits clothing for herself but is only able to get away with such self-serving behavior if she disguises it as altruism. When she’s knitting, other people assume that she’s making something for a soldier. To escape criticism or the constant pressure to be more patriotic, Towney must performatively show that she’s contributing to the war effort. Her deception illustrates the hollowness of patriotism in the story: Everything is a performance; nothing is sincere.

“She was hardened to stories of personal disaster.”

Miranda’s experience of the war is that she’s overcome by a sense of dread. She’s unable to relate to the stories of death and destruction any longer, as she has been smothered into unfeeling. Miranda has become numb to the constant pressures of the world around her and can no longer engage with the “stories of personal disaster” on an emotional level.

“He was infinitely buttoned, strapped, harnessed into a uniform as tough and unyielding in cut as a straight jacket.”

To Miranda, Adam’s uniform is a trap. It straps, buttons, and harnesses him into an impossible position, imprisoning him in the military, which will eventually be the cause of his death. The comparison with the straightjacket suggests that, to Miranda, every aspect of the war now seems insane. She sees Adam as being trapped in a maddening situation and sees no way that he can escape.

“Well, let’s be strong minded and not have any of it.”

Adam and Miranda agree not to discuss the horrors of the war. To them, this is being “strong minded” (80). Being strong is to see the terrible nature of the world and deliberately blind oneself to it, though the characters have little choice. The horrors of the war are self-evident, so to forcefully ignore them is an act of radical self-preservation.

“They had eaten and danced to the urgent whine and bray of jazz orchestras.”

The short time Adam and Miranda have together is conditioned by a sense of urgency. Everything about their brief romance is dictated by time concerns; either Adam’s departure for England or Miranda’s creeping sense of dread infuses their relationship with an urgency that they can’t deny. They experience everything, even the music, in this urgent manner, making the most of what little time they have.

“There’s too much of everything in this world just now.”

To Miranda, reality is overwhelming. There’s simply too much of everything, from social pressure to bad news, to keep ahead of it all. As her health deteriorates, she feels inundated with reality, wishing that the world could be simpler. Miranda’s relationship with Adam partially reflects this: She reduces everything to her love for Adam—which, at first, is a simple love story that she can understand.

“I’ve got it all done, even before the headliner comes on.”

Chuck writes the review for the show before he has seen the headline act. In doing so, he illustrates the hollowness of the world: Nothing is authentic—even the articles in the newspaper are dashed off for the sake of convenience rather than to provide actual information. Everything is determined by the whims of other people rather than by authentic emotion or facts.

“To prove our faith in Democracy to each other, and to the world, let everybody get together and buy Liberty Bonds and do without sugar and wool socks.”

During the war, the main way that people on the home front can contribute is through consumer choices. Those who aren’t drafted for the military—women and medically unsuitable men—are compelled to use their consumer power to contribute to the war effort and be patriotic (for example, by buying Liberty Bonds or by not buying sugar). These people are so powerless and alienated that they only way that they can contribute to events on a global scale is through their purchasing choices.

“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.”

Even in the US, the war has a dehumanizing effect on the people involved. The “fear and suspicion” that the war causes turn society into a dark, hollow place. The population willfully blinds itself to the outside world because grappling with the brutal reality of war is too painful. The characters recognize this dehumanizing effect as the “worst of war” but don’t know how to stop it.

“They said not a word, and the small pantomime repeated itself, like a melancholy short film running monotonously over and over again.”

To the characters, existence during wartime is a type of performance. The characters must perform patriotism to one another and to society at large to show that they’re invested in their country’s contributions to winning the war. Like the characters in the theater shows, Miranda and her friends take part in an elaborate pantomime that repeats itself, again and again. Their existence has become like the stage shows that Miranda reviews for a living.

“It’s a respectable old custom to inflict your death on the family if you can manage it.”

Miranda’s nihilism becomes even more apparent when she’s on the brink of death. In this moment, she doesn’t view her death as a tragedy or even something regrettable but as something that she wryly jokes she’ll “inflict” on her family. Even as she lays on what could be her deathbed, Miranda can’t help but darkly joke about her own mortality.

“This time last night we were dancing.”

The sudden onset of illness juxtaposes Miranda’s moment of fleeting happiness with the prospect of terrible sickness. Just hours before developing symptoms, she and Adam were dancing and enjoying each other’s company. The contrast between the happy, urgent dancing and the fatalistic outbreak of the symptoms highlights the rapid nature of the disease. That Miranda notices and comments on this shows that she’s aware of the terrible nature of the illness.

“Don’t you love being alive?”

Miranda’s comment about loving life, ironically, comes when she’s closest to death. Miranda is aware of her own mortality, so her comment is heavy with ironic humor. She hasn’t loved being alive, to the point that she struggles to name a time in her life when she was really happy. Unfortunately for Miranda, her relationship with Adam has given her life purpose, just when her own mortality is most threatened. Miranda makes an ironic comment because she recognizes the inherent irony of her position.

“Death always leaves one singer to mourn.”

Miranda is convinced that she’ll die and that someone will survive to mourn her. The survival of a single mourner adds tragedy to a death, as someone is there to demonstrate and embody the death’s sadness. In this moment, however, Miranda assumes that she’ll die and that Adam will mourn her. However, the inverse will happen. Miranda’s survival is tragic because she’s left alone to mourn the man she loves.

“Good-by for five minutes.”

Adam’s final words to Miranda are a promise to return. This promise will remain unfulfilled forever, creating a contrast between the short time he promises to be away and the real implication of his words. In the context of their lives, the relationship between Adam and Miranda is brief. The 10 days that they’re together feels like just five minutes. Adam says farewell for now, not knowing that his words will become a comment on their short time together.

“He was here and now he is gone.”

In Miranda’s feverish state, her words take on even greater meaning. She mentions to the paramedics that Adam “was here and now he is gone,” meaning that he was physically present in the room but stepped outside for a moment. In a more profound sense, however, Miranda will recover—and discover that Adam was with her but is now gone forever. Her feverish, throwaway comment proves to contain more truth than she might have realized.

“Well, we’ll manage something.”

The medical staff at the hospital are facing an impossible situation, in which the influenza spreads rapidly through the hospital and leaves them in short supply. All the staff can do is manage patients, as though they’re fighting in the war, which is about to end. The decision to “manage something” is a parallel to both the war and Miranda’s approach to life. She assumes the worst and tries to muddle through as best she can, even as death and suffering surround her.

“The wrong she had done followed her and haunted her dream.”

For Miranda, the fever and the terrible dreams it conjures are a form of purgatory. She’s forced to relive the worst moments of her life and then to endure horrible fictitious scenes that emerge from the darkest recesses of her mind. Miranda experiences great suffering in the hospital, confronting her biggest regrets before she can return to life. The memories hurt her more than the physical pain.

“Can this be my face?”

During her sickness, Miranda’s body changes. Her fever is an example of her body threatening to sweat and vomit itself to death, conspiring against her to bring about pain and suffering. To that extent, Miranda feels betrayed by her body and—when she looks in a mirror—she hardly recognizes herself. She doesn’t know the person who’s subjecting her to this torment, even if it’s herself.

“At night, after the long effort of lying in her chair, in her extremity of grief for what she had so briefly won, she folded her painful body together and wept silently, shamelessly, in pity for herself and her lost rapture.”

Miranda beats the fever—but at a great cost. The visions of grief and horror that came to her in her fever dreams will haunt her forever, while her brief moment of peaceful bliss on the brink of death will haunt her in a similar way. She felt so certain and so assured that she’d die that she made her peace with her death. Now, to return to life, she knows only pain.

“It had happened—she looked at the date—more than a month ago.”

Miranda discovers that Adam died a month before, meaning that she has missed her chance to mourn him properly. She once envisioned a funeral for herself with a single, solitary mourner. She hoped that this would be Adam, as a demonstration of his love. Now, however, she can’t even return him this favor, as he died without her knowledge. Adam died alone and was buried alone, meaning that Miranda is even further separated from the man she briefly loved.