he structure of both texts is interesting when analysing the psychological impact of modernity. Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ is set during the 1918 influenza epidemic that ravaged the post Great War world infecting up to 500 million people (then one third of the world’s population) and killing an estimated 50 million, 675,000 of whom were in the United States . To keep up morale during the final year of the war the extent of the outbreak was hidden by the government and the press leading to a general suppression of its representation in forms of media compared with the World Wars that occurred either side of it. It would have been likely that almost every person on the planet would have either been infected or have known someone who had been infected yet the trauma they experienced was buried deep. The wish of Porter to display her experiences of the epidemic where she herself was infected is clear to see in the structure of the text. Due to the ‘quasi-autobiographical’ (Cuiba, 55) nature of Miranda the use of pronouns is incredibly fluid with Porter regularly switching between ‘me’ and ‘I’ as well as ‘Miranda’. This highlights the psychological impact on Porter as she is attempting to highlight her horrific experiences of surviving influenza as well as having to live in silence for years after. In her writing there is a true sense of mourning and bereavement as well as a deep-rooted sense of isolation. The harrowing lyrics of ‘Pale horse, pale rider, done taken my lover away’ (Lispector, 349) encapsulates the psychological scar on not only Porter and the character of Miranda 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-autobiogr