Essay Questions

In what ways do Miranda and Maria differ from ordinary children of their age?

The narrator says that Miranda and Maria are extraordinary in two ways. Firstly, the little girls are intelligent and they are not living their age. They know that they are children but also accept that they know a lot and they have sharp memories of what happened if before they were born. The can look at situations from more than one perspective and analyze them to come up with their conclusions. As much as they listen a lot, the do not just accept what they are told. For instance, they have heard many stories concerning the beauty of their family lineage. However, they do not just agree because they examine their grandmother to ascertain if indeed she is beautiful. They are surprised to see that she has old-fashioned clothes and most of her house is the smell. Secondly, these little girls are inquisitive. They ask many questions to satisfy their curiosity. For instance, they are asking almost everybody about Aunt Amy who is glorified of gorgeousness. They want to compare opinions and make own judgment. All these attributes make these little girls unique and different from children of their age.

How does the Narrator use Harry as a character to develop ironic sentiments in the “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”?

Harry is a father to the little girls, Miranda and Maria. Harry is obsessed with telling poetic and romantic stories about his family lineage. For instance, he proudly looks at Amy's pictures and describes how beautiful she was before passing on. He says that Amy was the epitome of beauty. If she seems a bit fat in the pictures, it is not true, that she was fat. She was a slim girl just like her mother. In his family lineage, there is no fat woman. All of them are slender with beautiful body shapes. Despite all these praises, it is ironic that two of his sisters Keziah and Eliza are very fat. The little girls are surprised at how ironic their father can be sometimes. The narrator says:

“But how did their father account for great-aunt Eliza, who quite squeezed herself through doors, and who, when seated, was one solid pyramid monument from floor to neck? What about great-aunt Keziah, in Kentucky? Her husband great-uncle John Jacob had refused to allow her to ride his good horses after she had achieved two hundred and twenty pounds.”

Briefly explain two examples of how the literary device ‘imagery’ is illustrated in “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”.

Firstly, the sense of smell is depicted by the imagery of dead things and medicated cigarettes, which smells like the beeswax. The little girls discover this when they try to look around inside their grandmother's house. The narrator writes, "The clothes were not even romantic looking, but merely most terribly out of fashion, and the whole affair was associated, in the minds of the little girls, with dead things; the smell of grandmother's medicated cigarettes and her furniture that smelled of beeswax, and her old-fashioned perfume."

The second imagery becomes prevalent when the little girls are cautious not to touch anything belonging to their grandmother unless allowed. The narrator says, “If Maria and Miranda were very quiet, and touched nothing until they were offered, they might sit by her at these times, or come and go.”