Existential Crisis Behind the Plague Writing in Pale Horse, Pale Rider

American author Katherine Anne Porters novelette Pale Horse, Pale Rider takes the First World War and the Great Pandemic of 1918 as the background. Through some modernist techniques such as stream of consciousness and non-linear narrative, the story focuses on the chaotic and broken feelings of the heroine Miranda during her illness. The illness experience offers an opportunity for Miranda to think about life. In this case, Mirandas existential crisis, haunting and difficult to solve, is revealed through the psychological description during her illness and the implication of the modernist narrative techniques. In addition, descriptions of peoples lives during the war exposes great oppression of the war on people, suggesting social cause of Mirandas existential crisis. Through analysis of the plague writing and the social situation in the text, this essay will conclude that modernist plague writing is a manifestation of the existential crisis, and the plague has symbolic meaning in the text, implying the existential crisis of Americans under the influence of the First World War.