The Performance of Patriotism Theme Analysis

World War I serves as the historical backdrop across for “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” The story takes place in Denver in 1918, over a year after the United States entered into the war. Though fought overseas, the war pervades every facet of life in Porter’s Denver, and an overwhelming sense of uselessness, shame, and guilt weighs on those unable to contribute directly to wartime efforts. The war even affects the characters who are opposed to it, such as Miranda: Miranda doesn’t put on patriotic airs, but she does feel shame at thinking (or avoiding thinking) about the very real possibility of the death of Adam, the soldier she is in love with. In “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Porter argues that many Americans put on a show of patriotism in order to make themselves feel less helpless in the face of a horrific war. Porter’s assessment is critical but not dismissive: she accepts the phoniness of patriotism, positioning it as a legitimate coping mechanism humanity adopts in order to deal with the death and destruction that war presents. 

Liberty bonds (investments sold to citizens to aid in the war effort) feature prominently in “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” as help that any concerned citizen could (and should) offer, “to help beat the Boche.” Porter depicts purchasing a Liberty Bond as a gesture that requires little physical effort while still carrying great symbolic weight. She introduces the significance of the bonds early on, establishing immediately the connection between patriotism and performance. In the beginning of the story, Miranda arrives at the newspaper office where she works as a dramatic critic and finds two men waiting before her desk. She notes their expensive-looking clothes and the “stale air of borrowed importance” the men have about them. That Miranda describes the men’s importance as “borrowed” suggests that their importance is not genuine or innate, but put-on or performed. These falsely important men identify Miranda as “the only one in this whole newspaper office that hasn’t come in” to purchase a bond. They inform Miranda that investing in a Liberty Bond is “just a pledge of good faith on her part […] that she [is] a loyal American doing her duty.” In other words, it’s not so much the $50 it would cost Miranda to buy a bond that matters ($50 won’t win the war), but the symbolic gesture that Miranda’s money represents. By lending $50 to the government, Miranda would prove to her cohort that she acts as a virtuous, loyal patriot ought to act. But Miranda adamantly refuses, as $50 is ludicrously outside the budget her $18-a-week salary affords her. What’s more, when the men accuse her of not being supportive of “our American boys fighting and dying in Belleau Wood,” she denounces (in her head) the phony principle of Liberty Bonds: “Suppose I asked that little thug,” she muses, “What’s the matter with you, why aren’t you rotting in Belleau Wood?” Miranda reflects on the hypocrisy of these men: who are they to demand that she do more for her country when they, themselves, are only doing the bare minimum? Miranda’s criticism solidifies that the men’s patriotism is all show and no action—in other words, it is only a performance.

Porter utilizes language that evokes theatrics and display when describing the war, which also makes patriotism seem performative. When Miranda walks into the hospital where she has volunteered to visit with a wounded soldier, she describes the row of wounded soldiers as “a selected presentable lot, sheets drawn up to their chins, not seriously ill.” There is no immediacy or emotion in Miranda’s description of the soldiers; on the contrary, she seems to view them as actors merely cast in the role of wounded hero. In turn, the women who volunteer to visit these “picturesquely bandaged soldiers” enter the hospital accompanied by “girlish laughter meant to be refreshingly gay.” The women imbue their laughter with a cheerful, “girlish” tone in order to improve the soldiers’ spirits, but their mood is not genuine; Miranda notes that “there was a grim determined clang in it calculated to freeze the blood.” By describing the women’s laughter in terms of its “determined clang” and “calculated” nature, Miranda reveals the truth about the women’s seemingly cheerful demeanor: that it is insincere and put-on. Miranda shakes her head “at the idiocy of her errand” because she sees it as useless. The wounded men will not be consoled by her, nor she comforted by the fact that she is supposedly helping them. The “errand” of visiting the wounded is but a virtue-signaling display of patriotism.

Throughout “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Porter’s treatment of Liberty Bonds and the theatrical language she evokes to describe Miranda’s experience as a volunteer betrays the emptiness and futility of patriotism. Though she doesn’t maliciously condemn acts of patriotism, Porter remains critical of their underlying symbolic currency.