anda but also those who suffered. The song itself can be read as a response to grieving process and its psychological impact. Cuiba stated that the ‘repetitions of stanzas create a sense of artistic order amid the disorder of death’. This is a classic method of trying to deal with bereavement and would have been especially poignant in the terror and confusion of the influenza epidemic. During this period there was mass panic as doctors were yet to find any meaningful cure and were prescribing things like ‘orange juice and ice cream’ and there were very few available hospital beds. There was also mass panic within the population about getting sick as highlighted by the reaction of Miss Hobbe ‘crying shrilly’ that they must come for Miranda immediately or she’ll ‘put her on the sidewalk’. This is further reinforced with the foreshadowing statement by Miranda that ‘Death always leaves one singer to mourn’. In this a comparison can, be made to the plight of Macabéa who is first diagnosed with tuberculosis and then later mowed down by a speeding car. While the story of Miranda is undoubtedly tragic, she survives the ordeal and is loved by another. She has to take the emotional burden of grief and then the psychological impact of not being able to mourn properly, but she is still alive. Death leaves nobody to mourn Macabéa. Modernity picks her up and swallows her whole. In the city she becomes anonymous, just another soul in a seething mass of people clambering to move up the social ladder like Olympico. In this ruthless world Macabéa is psychologically beaten into submission and forgotten. When reading the two texts, the structure that Lispector employs makes the psychological impact of modernity far more visceral. While it can be argued that the semi-autobiographical nature of Porter’s text makes the portrayal of the psychological impact of modernity far more real to the reader, I believe that the structure of Lispector’s novel is far more harrowing. By imagining herself as a writer struggling to create the character of Macabéa, it reinforces the ephemeral nature of the character. She is not the literary representation of a famous author. She is just another soul lost to the chaos of modernity. Through this structure we see the creation of Macabéa and due to this we know her whole life. She only exists on the page but represents much more.