Foreshadowing In "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"

After reader “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” I tried to find the Bible verse containing the ‘Pale Horse” reference. This text can be found in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation. Time rides upon the White horse; War rides upon the Red horse; Famine rides upon the Black horse and Death rides upon the Pale horse. According to this story the four horsemen are named after the dangers that they embody and carry with them; they represent the forces of man’s destruction.

Revelation 6:8 “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

According to the Bible the pale horse signifies death and widespread devastation, which in the case of this short story seems to be the influenza epidemic. Death would be the appropriate rider for this horse given what it brings forth. After knowing the significance of this passage from the Bible it is easy to notice the foreshadowing presented by Porter in the beginning of the story. In Miranda’s dream she mentions a “lank greenish stranger” which gives the impression of a very sick and weak person (Porter 269). She then chooses to ride Graylie, a horse whose name implies that its color is gray or even pale. Miranda then acknowledges that the stranger is Death because she say’s, “Come now, Graylie, … we must outrun Death and the Devil” (Porter 270). The stranger’s horse was also gray, which further proves that this horse and rider in her dream are death and the pale horse referred to in the Bible. She tries to outrun Death on her own gray horse, which she eventually does because by the end of the story she has survived the epidemic.