Critical Evaluation

John Millington Synge is considered the greatest playwright of the Irish Literary
Revival, a movement in Ireland associated with the poet William Butler Yeats and
other Irish writers. This revival took place at the end of the nineteenth century and the
beginning of the twentieth. Irish-born, Synge studied at Trinity College in Dublin and
received a scholarship to study music. He traveled to the Continent and lived in Paris,
where he taught English and began writing poetry. In Paris, in 1896, Synge met Yeats,
a leading writer and one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, a theater
dedicated to performing Irish plays. Yeats advised Synge to return to Ireland and take
as a model for his writing the people of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland.

Synge followed Yeats’s advice. From this experience came Synge’s book, The Aran
Islands (1907), a travel memoir recounting island folklore and daily events in the lives
of the local people. From this same material Synge took inspiration and material for
his plays. Writing of actual events, Synge used expressions and speech patterns of the
old-fashioned local dialect to give a poetic, particularly Irish quality to his drama. The
Aran Islands are the inspiration for Riders to the Sea. The details regarding the
drownings are realistic; drownings were not uncommon there, and all the adult men
regularly went to sea. A young woman wonders if a drowned man whose body has
been found is her missing brother. She puts together information about his clothing
and an object found on him to confirm that the dead man must be her brother Mike.
Synge weaves this and other material into the tragic story of Maurya, her two
daughters, and the lost men of the family. In doing so he takes the story beyond the
local to a mythic level.

Riders to the Sea begins with the image of the daughter Cathleen at her spinning
wheel. Later, when Cathleen and Nora examine the clothing of the drowned man,
trying to determine whether it is Michael’s or not, Cathleen cuts the string that holds
the bundle. Examining the stocking, Nora speaks of knitting, dropping and picking up
stitches. These images of spinning, knitting, and cutting suggest the actions of the
Fates, classical goddesses of destiny who determine the length of human life as they
spin and cut the thread of life. Maurya’s speech of resignation at the end of Riders to
the Sea has been compared to the ending of a Greek tragedy, Sophocles’ Oidipous
Tyrannos (c. 429 b.c.e.; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715), in which the chorus says that no
mortal is happy until he has passed beyond life’s pain. Maurya’s vision of the dead
Michael riding the gray horse as an omen of doom has a biblical flavor. It would be a
mistake, however, to read Synge’s allusions too strictly. Some of these images may
have been suggested by other sources. Synge does not force such parallels; rather, he
uses them to add color and a mythic scale.

Synge also uses images of sacraments. Water, often a sign of baptism and life, here
takes away life, but the people have no choice but to turn to it for their living. The
bread of life, a cake that is baking on the turf fire, goes uneaten by Bartley as he
leaves without his mother’s blessing. When she tries to correct this oversight he is
already beyond her help.

Color images are also important. The few colors in the play stand out against a gray
and stormy world. Nora speaks of “the green head” of land where the tide is turning
and of the likelihood that Bartley will sail in spite of his mother’s wishes. Later
Cathleen refers to Bartley riding “over the green head” on his way to the boat. The
rope that Bartley wants to use to tie the gray horse has been chewed on by the pig
with the black feet. The boards the mother is saving for Michael’s casket are white.
The red mare and the gray pony are vivid images in an otherwise bleak landscape.
Maurya cries out that when the black night falls she will not have a son left. When
Nora tells of how Michael’s body was found by two men rowing past the black cliffs
to the north, the birds that fly over the sea where his body was found are described as
“black hags.” Maurya describes seeing the body of Patch, an older son, brought home
dripping on a red sail. The women who come into the house to pray and mourn, like a
tragic chorus, are wearing red petticoats, the color of the sail. Finally, Maurya says
that Bartley will have a “fine coffin out of the white boards.” Green, black, red, gray,
and white create a pattern of life, death, and resignation.

The humble cottage in which the play is set is like an island itself, small and
vulnerable in comparison to the large, dangerous world outside. The beauty of
Synge’s one-act play, which takes approximately half an hour to perform, is in its
language and its simplicity. It presents the clear line of the tragedy itself, seen in its
final hours. The players in this drama are not at fault for what happens to them.
Instead, this is a tragedy of a fate that cannot be avoided and in the face of which
there is no alternative but stoicism and acceptance.

Discuss the significance of the title, Riders to the Sea by

John Millington Synge.
John Millington Synge spent time on the Aran Islands, off the Galway coast of
Southern Ireland, in an effort to be inspired to write literature with a purely Irish
influence. Riders to the Sea was his first play and in it he captures the essence of
many poor Irish people, particularly Catholics in this instance, as they struggle against
the forces of nature and their environment which have a huge impact on them. They
also struggle with the potential contradictory implications of their Catholic faith.
Maurya has lost so many of her family, including her husband and four sons, drowned
at sea, having been trying to make a living selling horses on the mainland. Now she
must face the possibility that she has lost Michael and may lose Bartley, her last two
surviving sons. Synge does not temper the play with any unnecessary refinements; he
simply tells it like it is, presenting an objective perspective that reveals the harsh
reality and never ending cycle for these people. There is no attempt to change
anything.

Maurya recognizes that there is a backward cycle to their lives when she reflects that,
"In the big world the old people do be leaving things after them for their sons and
children, but in this place it is the young men do be leaving things behind for them
that do be old." At the end, Maurya who has now lost all six sons feels a relief that she
does not have to worry anymore because there are no more sons that she can lose.
She can have "a great rest." Maurya even makes a Celtic reference to the pagan
festival, "Samhain," often favored as a Celtic tradition but essentially pagan. Maurya
is "satisfied," knowing that her sons, and their father, are together and she accepts her
lot, recognizing that giving Bartley the best she can (a "fine coffin" and "a deep grave)
will bring a certain peace of its own. All the elements come together: her faith, nature
and her environment, her superstitions and her acceptance. Maurya's sons and others
before them are "riders to the sea" and do not question their destiny.

The title is therefore significant and has a double meaning. The sea can be both the
savior and the destructive force. It is the provider because her sons can make a living
but it is also the force which takes their lives. It has the capacity to change their lives
for the better or for the worse. Unfortunately, this family will be unable to transform
themselves or their lives from being the victims to the victors. The significance of the
title and its irony resonates with the reader who understands and sympathizes with the
desperate situation.

Write a character sketch of Maurya of the play "Riders of

the Sea."
Maurya is an peasant woman who has 6 sons, 4 of whom have died at sea. Michael,
one of 2 remaining sons, is also feared dead, as is Bartley, her final son. Once the
deaths of the final 2 sons have been confirmed, Maurya realizes that she has lost every
one of the men in her life to the sea, including her husband and his father.

She is a very strong woman who has endured much suffering in her life due to the
deaths in her family. She has remained strong for the rest of her family and has
trusted God's plan for her and for her children. She ultimately is able to find peace
with the deaths of her husband and sons because the sea cannot take anymore people
from her. Plus, she realizes that they are all together now in Heaven:

Maurya’s nobility and maturity of spirit enable her to see the good in all of her men
now being together. She sprinkles Holy Water over the dead Bartley and asks God’s
mercy on the souls of her men, on her own, and, generously, on the souls of everyone
left living in the world.

In the play Riders to the Sea, the sea represents not only the way in which the people
on an island to the west of Ireland can make a living, it also represents the cruel hand
of fate. Maurya, the widow at the center of the play, has experienced the drowning of
four of her sons and her husband when the play opens (her fifth son, Michael, drowns
shortly after the play begins). During the course of the play, she tries to prevent her
final son, Bartley, from setting sail to sell a horse. She says the following to him:

"If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a
thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?"

However, Bartley ignores her and sets off. He feels a responsibility to support the
family as the one remaining man. Even before Maurya hears news of Bartley's
drowning (which occurs when the horse throws him into the sea), she says, "He's gone
now, and when the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world." She has
accepted her fate—that the sea will swallow up all her sons.

At the end of the play, she is relieved that there is not much more that fate, in the form
of the sea, can do to harm her. She says, "They're all gone now, and there isn't
anything more the sea can do to me." After a lifetime of suffering, she is left without
much more that can be taken away by the sea, which represents inescapable fate.

What is the main theme of Riders of the Sea by J.M. Synge?

As the previous poster noted, one of the main themes in the story is that of the sea.
Because her sons are always leaving her to be killed by the sea along with her
husband, Maurya has become terrified of its power and wants desperately to find a
way to save her two remaining sons from its power. In the end, however, she cannot
do so and the final two end up drowning and the incredible power of the sea both as
an attraction and a destroyer is made evident.

Another theme is that of loss and the inevitability of it. Of course her sons and her
father did not have to go to sea and not everyone who goes to sea drowns, but Maurya
finds a sort of fate in the power of the sea over her family and her dreams and her
waking life are haunted with the power of the sea to reach out and take away her most
precious possessions.

Discuss Synges Riders To The Sea As An One- Act Play.

The one-act structure of Riders to the Sea emphasizes the relentless nature of the sea
and the inevitability of fate. At the beginning of the play, Maurya, the matriarch of the
family, finds out that one of her two remaining sons, Michael, has drowned. She has
already lost all her other sons, save Bartley—the last remaining son, to the sea, and
her husband has also drowned.

She knows that when her last living son, Bartley, leaves on a boat, that he will drown.
She says, "He's gone now, God spare us, and we'll not see him again. He's gone now,
and when the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world." Her words
emphasize the inevitability of fate, as she rightly predicts that by nightfall, she will
have lost all her sons. She believes at first that the priest will be able to stop Bartley
from going to sea, but the priest cannot do so, signifying the inutility of religion and
the force of fate. The fast rising action of this one-act play highlights the way that fate
moves forward and the way in which no mortal can stop it.

Analysis of the Play

Riders to the Sea begins in a cottage where two sisters are conspiring to hide a bundle
from their mother. The small bundle, wrapped in a shawl, consists of a shirt and a
stocking removed from a drowned man at Donegal. They fear that the clothes may
belong to Michael, their brother, whose body has not been recovered from the sea. He
has been missing for a week.

They and their mother, Maurya, have been in deep mourning. Their brother Bartley
then becomes the subject of the girls’ conversation. Cathleen asks Nora whether their
brother will be sailing with the horses that are to be taken to the mainland. There will
be a fair in Galway where animals can be sold or purchased. Nora strikes an ominous
note when she answers her sister: “God won’t leave her destitute . . . with no son
living.”
Because the sisters have no wish to sadden their mother further, they decide to hide
the bundle of clothes in a turf loft. As they are climbing down from the loft, the
mother arrives; she pretends that she was getting turf for the fire. The conversation
then turns to Maurya’s worries about her son Bartley. She fears that he, too, will be
lost in the sea, just as his five brothers were. She is aware of his desire to go to the fair,
but she is sure that the young priest will dissuade him from going. The weather is not
at all propitious: high tide and extreme winds.

Nora confirms her mother’s fears by telling her that Bartley has informed three of his
friends that he is determined to sell the family’s last animals at the fair. The extreme
poverty of the family forces him to make this decision.

Bartley enters the cottage, looking for a piece of new rope he had bought in
Connemara. Maurya cautions him to leave the rope on the nail, but he insists that he
needs it to make a halter for the horse. This detail underscores the family’s economic
plight. Bartley tries to reason with his mother that the fair promises to be a good one
for the sale of horses, but she turns her attention (and the audience’s) to some white
boards stacked in the corner of the cottage, boards to make a coffin for Michael
whenever his body is recovered from the sea.

Bartley’s firm decision to brave the dangerous sea is revealed when he whispers to his
sisters to take care of feeding the sheep. Maurya again tries to warn him of the
dangers, but he insists that he must go. He will take the family’s red mare, with the
gray pony tied behind. After announcing his plans, he asks his mother for a blessing
(a custom common in Ireland), but Maurya refuses to give it. Bartley leaves.

When Cathleen and Nora realize that he has left without food, Cathleen asks her
mother to walk quickly to meet him by the well, to give him bread and the neglected
blessing. Maurya accepts, picks up the walking stick belonging to the drowned
Michael and goes to look for Bartley, lamenting, “In the big world the old people do
be leaving things after them for their sons and children, but in this place it is the
young men do be leaving things behind for them that do be old.”

Once she is gone, the girls hurriedly retrieve the bundle of clothes to examine them
more closely. First, they try to match the flannel shirt with one of Michael’s that had
been left hanging on a hook. They discover that Bartley has taken that shirt to wear, as
it is newer than his own. Nora takes the stocking from the bundle, counts the stitches
(since it was a hand-knitted one), and recognizes her own work. Some dropped
stitches positively identify the stocking as one that she had knitted for her brother.

Once more, they hide the clothes from their mother, thinking that she will be in a
better frame of mind when she returns, having had an opportunity to give a blessing to
Bartley. When Maurya returns to the cottage, however, she is more upset than before.
Maurya tells them that she has seen Michael. To give her a sense of reality, the
daughters show her Michael’s clothes and assure her of the clean burial he has had in
the sea.

Saddened, Maurya then tells the girls of the strange occurrence that took place outside
the cottage: “I’m after seeing him this day, and he riding and galloping. Bartley came
first on the red mare; and I tried to say ‘God speed you,’ but something choked the
words in my throat. He went by quickly; and ‘the blessing of God on you,’ says he,
and I could say nothing. . . .”

Her speech is interrupted by the sound of the islanders returning with the body of
Bartley, who has been thrown into the sea and drowned. As the men were loading the
animals on the boat, the gray pony, unsettled by the wind, kicked Bartley into the sea.

Attention centers on Maurya as she kneels by the body of Bartley. The audience sees
the white boards that had been bought for Michael’s coffin; now they will be used to
make Bartley’s. Maurya, though resigned to her fate—having lost six sons to the
sea—triumphantly announces, “There’s no more the sea can do to me. . . . it’s a great
rest I’ll have now, and it’s time surely. . . . They’re all together. . . . No man at all can
be living forever, and we must be satisfied.” Cathleen asks the men to make a coffin,
but they find that there are no nails. Once more, the audience is reminded of the
family’s great poverty, when one of the men says, “[I]t’s a great wonder she wouldn’t
think of the nails, and all the coffins she’s seen made already.”

The play ends, having recounted the hardships of an Irish family—hardships brought
on by economic destitution.

Dramatic Devices
Riders to the Sea, by using a single setting, directs the playgoer’s attention to the
intense emotion built up within the four principal characters: Maurya, Cathleen, Nora,
and Bartley. The single setting also allows a close look at certain symbols that John
Millington Synge uses to reinforce his themes and meanings: the hand-knitted
stocking, a piece of string, a rope, new clothes, the gray pony, and the boards.
Attention is directed first toward the bundle of clothes taken from a drowned man in
the sea. It is the hand-knitted stocking that identifies the clothes of the missing
Michael:Nora, (who has taken up the stocking and counted the stitches, crying out):
It’s Michael, Cathleen, it’s Michael; God spare his soul, and what will herself say
when she hears this story, and Bartley on the sea? Cathleen (taking the stocking): It’s
a plain stocking. Nora: It’s the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three
score stitches, and I dropped four of them. Cathleen (counts the stiches): It’s that
number is in it.

The piece of rope that has been hanging on a nail since the beginning of the play takes
on a symbolic meaning when Bartley asks for it to make a halter for the horse. The
substitution of rope for a real halter signifies the poverty of the family. One critic,
Mary C. King, has noted that the fact that the rope was purchased on the mainland
serves as one indication of the changing way of life being imposed on the islanders.

A piece of string takes on a symbolic meaning also. The string had held together the
bundle of Michael’s clothes; now string and rope link the dead Michael to the living
Bartley, points out King.

When Bartley changes his clothes, he removes his own old shirt and puts on a newer
one of the same flannel fabric. The sartorial image of old and new clothes reinforces
the contrast between the old ways of the islanders (fishing, farming, weaving) and the
new ways of the mainlanders (buying and selling).

The Aran Islanders could easily associate economic and religious symbols, since they,
a very religious people, had been so greatly affected by a change of life-styles caused
by economics. At the climax of the play, the gray pony, alluded to several times in the
dialogue, takes on its full meaning as the pale horse, Death, of Revelation. It is the
gray pony that knocks the last remaining son into the sea.

Clothes, string, boards, rope—all these symbols bear some relationship with the sea,
the sound of which opens the play. The sea gives the characters their living by
providing food and work, but it also causes their misery and suffering. Yet it is not
water from the sea that ends this drama. For when Maurya has resigned herself to the
death of all of her sons, she uses the Christian sign of holy water to bless the body of
Bartley. Here water does not signify death, but life.(To NORA.) Give me the Holy
Water, Nora, there’s a small sup still on the dresser. (NORA gives it to her.
MAURYA drops Michael’s clothes across BARTLEY’s feet, and sprinkles the Holy
Water over him.) . . . It isn’t that I haven’t prayed for you Bartley, to the Almighty
God. It isn’t that I haven’t said prayers in the dark night till you wouldn’t know what
I’d be saying: but it’s a great rest I’ll have now, and it’s time surely. It’s a great rest
I’ll have now, and great sleeping in the long nights after Samhain, if it’s only a bit of
wet flour we do have to eat, and maybe a fish that would be stinking. (She kneels
down again, crossing herself, and saying prayers under her breath.)

Synge uses symbols to unite the varied meanings of the play: suffering, death, folk
traditions, the individual against society, the power of the sea, and faith in the face of
overwhelming obstacles.

Places Discussed
Cottage
Cottage. Island home within sight of the sea that is the home of the play’s main
characters. The play’s entire action takes place in a single room that serves as a
kitchen, workroom, and storage area. The room is sparsely furnished; its most
essential features are its fireplace, a spinning wheel, and its front door. The fireplace
provides immediate evidence of the simplicity of the family’s existence; it serves both
as a cooking oven and as the cottage’s sole source of heat. The fireplace’s fuel is turf,
which is stored in a loft beside the fireplace. The primitiveness of these arrangements
is crude, even by the standards of the late nineteenth century, when turf-burning ovens
were found only in places of extreme isolation and poverty.
The room’s spinning wheel is clearly not decorative since Cathleen begins working at
it immediately. The fact that some pieces of clothing are handmade is important in the
identification of Michael’s belongings. John Millington Synge makes strong use of
the door, through which each drowned member of the house has come, with seawater
dripping a trail to the door.

*Aran Islands
*Aran Islands. Group of small islands off the west coast of Ireland, near the entrance
to Galway Bay, on one of whose islands the cottage stands. Exposed to the full fury of
the open North Atlantic Ocean, the waters around these islands are extremely
dangerous, and the constantly changing weather is unpredictable. The play
emphasizes the danger of life on the sea with references to the numbers of men who
have drowned in it—including five members of the family. However, sea travel is
also essential to the family’s survival—a fact made clear by repeated references to
Galway and Connemara on the mainland. Aside from items brought by traveling
salesmen, everything the family cannot make must come across the sea.

Why did Bartley try to take the pony to Connemara in spite

of his mother's warnings?
Bartley wants to take some ponies with him to the Galway Fair. He expects it to be a
good fair, which will mean he'll get a fair price for his ponies. But his mother Maurya
is worried for Bartley after what happened to her other son Michael, and she begs him
not to go. But Bartley insists on making the potentially hazardous sea journey. He
needs to make a living and so even if he wanted to stay at home, he couldn't. He says
he'll be back in four days' time at the absolute maximum.

Sadly, Bartley doesn't come back alive. The weather is simply too treacherous for the
journey ahead and he should never have gone in the first place. There's a crushing
sense of inevitability about what happens next. Once he's aboard the boat the grey
pony that he took with him kicks him into the sea, where he tragically drowns, just
like his brother Michael.

In-depth Summary of Riders to the Sea

Two sisters look in on their sleeping mother. Nora shows Cathleen a bundle of
clothing that she got from a young priest who brought them from Donegal, where the
body of a man washed up on the shore. The sisters think they might belong to Michael,
their missing brother.

When Maurya, their mother, wakes up, they talk about Bartley (Maurya's last living
son) going to Connemara. Maurya says that he won't go; the weather is too bad, and
the priest will stop him. Her daughter says that the priest won't stop him, and others
said that he would go. If he doesn't, there's a chance that another boat may not leave
for quite awhile.

Maurya and Bartley argue. She is worried that, if her son leaves, he'll die. She's lost
all the other men in her family to the sea. The bad weather, the uncertainty of whether
Michael is alive or not, and the history of her life compel her to beg Bartley to stay.
He doesn't listen, though. Her daughter Cathleen says that it's natural for young men
to go to the sea and not listen to old women who repeat the same thing over and over.
After he leaves, Maurya says that they won't see him again.

The women argue. They think that Maurya shouldn't have sent Bartley off with strong
words. However, Maurya was right. She identifies the clothes that the priest brought
as Michael's clothes and knows that her son is dead. Just as she's processing this,
people approach the house holding a large object with water dripping from it, leaving
a track by the big stones. Cathleen immediately recognizes that it's Bartley.
His horse threw him into the ocean where the surf was rough. Maurya says that the
sea can't affect her anymore; it's already taken everything. She says that now she can
stop saying so many prayers for her loved ones, like she prayed for Bartley. She says
that Michael has had a clean burial in the north and Barley will be buried with the
boards that they got for Michael. She says that no one lives forever, and so they must
be satisfied.

How does the play Riders to the Sea fulfill the themes of
resignation and reconciliation?
The famous Irish play Riders to the Sea explores the themes of resignation and
reconciliation in the relationship of the mother to the sea and to her own heartbreak.
When a body washes up on shore, Maurya and her daughters know that it is likely her
husband. When it is finally revealed that it is in fact her husband, she resigns herself
to the tragedy that has happened. Maurya also argues vehemently with her son Bartley
about his departure to sell a horse. She asks him not to travel on the sea, because it
will kill him—the sea has cursed Maurya and is taking all of the men from her life.
When Bartley nonetheless departs, she resigns herself to his ultimate fate, and she is
proven correct when he falls from his horse and drowns in the sea.

In the end, Maurya reconciles herself to her loneliness, to God, and to the sea. She is
broken-hearted, but she knows now that the sea can do her no more harm. She
"forgives" it, in a sense, knowing that it has no more power over her after all of the
men are deceased. She reconciles herself to God, after being angry with him, by
bringing out holy water and praying over her own life and the souls of her sons and
husband, and in the end, she accepts the solitary life that has befallen her.

In Riders to the Sea, why does Maurya try to dissuade

Bartley from taking the rope? Why do the girls send
Maurya after Bartley?
Maurya tells Bartley that once Michael's body has been located, she'll need the rope to
help lower his coffin into the ground. That's not the real reason, however; Maurya,
ever mindful of the weather conditions, has noticed that the wind is rising from the
south and west, potentially endangering Bartley's imminent journey.

But Bartley is insistent on going and on taking the rope with him. He says that he
needs the rope as a halter for the red mare he's planning to take with him to the horse
fair along with Michael's gray horse. There won't be another fair for a fortnight, so
Bartley has no time to waste; he and the horses must head off as soon as possible.

Bartley leaves for the boat in such haste that he leaves behind his bread. Cathleen
urges Maurya to go out and give it to him. Not only will he then have something to
eat for the journey, but Maurya will be able to wish him godspeed, as she pointedly
failed to do when he left the cottage. Cathleen believes that Maurya's wishing Bartley
godspeed will break the curse of her not having said it the first time.
In Riders to the Sea, why was the mother unable to bless her
son Bartley?
Maurya tries very hard to dissuade her son Bartley from going off to sell a horse. She
and the rest of the family have been waiting for over a week to hear the fate of her
other son, Michael, who is lost at sea and presumed dead. She pleads with Bartley not
to go because if Michael is dead, he will be the only son she has left and she worries
that he might die too. Dismissing her worries, Bartley is determined to go. She calls
him “a hard and cruel man” for not listening to her when she is trying to save him
from the sea. After he leaves, offering God’s blessing on her, his sister Cathleen
chastises her mother for not giving him the blessing in return. Maurya makes no direct
answer, but Cathleen soon realizes they have forgotten to give him some bread. She
suggests that Maurya take it to him and say “God speed you” when she sees him, and
her mother agrees.

What is the name of Maurya's youngest son in Riders to the

Sea?
Maurya has had six sons in total. At the beginning of the play, however, four have
died and a fifth, Michael, is suspected to be dead. Indeed, the opening stages of the
play are largely concerned with whether or not Michael is still alive. A priest reports
that a body has washed ashore, which is assumed to be Michael's. Maurya's sixth son,
and the youngest, is called Bartley.

Maurya's husband and father-in-law have also died before the play begins, meaning
that, with the absence of Michael, Bartley is left as the only man in the house. He
takes up the responsibility of financially supporting the family, which includes his
mother and also his two sisters, Cathleen and Nora. Later in the play Bartley dies, too,
after falling from his horse and drowning in the sea.

Can Maurya be called an ideal mother with the bitter

experiences of life?
Maurya embodies many elements of the ideal mother, and the bitter experiences of
her life largely reinforce that image. Your answer to this question depends on which
elements you identify and emphasize. As an individualized character, Maurya is
presented sympathetically in many ways, so we can conclude that she is a good
mother. As an ideal, you could consider her as an archetype of motherhood. Given
Synge’s Irish Catholic upbringing, which figures prominently in his work, it makes
sense to understand that vision of motherhood as connected to the Virgin Mary.

In this short one-act play, Maurya’s actions turn on anxiety for her son, Michael, who
is feared lost at sea. While she sleeps offstage, other characters quote the village
priest’s concerns that if his death is confirmed, “she'll be getting her death . . . with
crying and lamenting.” All of this indicates that motherhood is her primary
occupation, lending support to the archetype / Mary argument. In some ways, Synge
exaggerates that aspect, for Maurya loses not one but six sons.
Maurya is portrayed as sometimes hard on her sons, and in this respect, her behavior
can be considered less than ideal. Embittered from losing so many boys to the sea,
Maurya does not encourage her last sons. Other characters chide her for speaking
harshly to them. She responds by accusing her son Bartley of cruelty: “Isn't it a hard
and cruel man won't hear a word from an old woman, and she holding him from the
sea?”

At the end of the play, after the sea does take her last son, Maurya understands her
identity has shifted, as she is no longer their mother. The power of the sea is broken.
“They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.” As she
resigns herself, she sees that she is released from the weight of that responsibility: “it's
a great rest I'll have now, and it's time surely.” The very last lines are Maurya’s, and
she calls for God’s blessing on everyone: first on all her dead sons, and then those left
alive. “May He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of every one is left
living in the world.” In this she shows her compassion for others, an important quality
in a mother.

Who are the riders in Riders to the Sea?

Maurya has a terrifying vision in which she claims to have seen her late son Michael
riding behind her only living son, Bartley, as he sails to Connemara to sell a horse.
This turns out to be a premonition, as during his journey, Bartley falls from his horse
into the sea and drowns, leaving Maurya entirely bereft of children. Maurya's
premonition references the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Biblical Book of
Revelation. Two of the Horsemen are alluded to in Maurya's vision: one riding a red
horse, capable of taking away peace (Bartley), and another riding a pale horse (Death,
as represented by the figure of Michael).

The title is significant in another respect. We normally associate sailing with the sea,
not riding. One could argue that Synge uses the title Riders to the Sea to highlight the
futility of Bartley's fateful journey. He's a rider, not a sailor, and as such is doomed to
a premature end beneath the waves.

Describe the gender discrimination in this play?

Right from the start of the play, we're aware that the society portrayed is structured
along traditional gender lines. The women perform housework; the men are the
breadwinners. The world outside is the exclusive preserve of men; women are
confined to home and hearth. This is rural Irish society at its most traditional.

The whole family suffers as a direct consequence of traditional gender roles. After the
death of Michael, there's now only one man about the house, and that is Bartley.
Without additional (male) financial support, the family faces an uncertain, potentially
impoverished future. The family's travails represent in microcosm the economic and
demographic problems of the island in general. The island is wholly dependent on
fishing, and this is dangerous work. Inevitably, many young men perish at sea,
leaving their families and the community as a whole in financial distress.
And it is the family's economic decline that presages a potentially radical change in
gender roles and relations. With Bartley off to try and earn a living, the women of the
house must take on the roles traditionally associated with men. For example, Cathleen
needs to go to market and sell the family's pig. But Maurya is fiercely dismissive of
the very idea: she wonders how will Catherine get a fair price for the animal? The
implicit assumption here is that the men at the marketplace won't take Catherine
seriously as she is a woman and so won't give her a fair price for the pig. Maurya is
instinctively rebelling against what she sees as a desperate, uncertain future. She is
too old, too weary, too set in her ways to contemplate any substantial change in social
and gender relations. There is no choice, then, but for her to cling to the past with all
its certainties, its familiar patterns of social life, and its traditional division of labor
between the sexes.

Is Maurya from Riders to the Sea considered a tragic hero?

Why or why not?
In many ways, Maurya is a tragic hero. In Greek drama, a tragic hero is someone
destined by the gods to a tragic fate; try as the hero might, there is nothing he or she
can do to alter this fate. When the play opens, Maurya has already lost her husband,
father-in-law, and four of her six sons to the sea. Only Michael and Bartley are still
alive among her sons, but Michael is already lost. At the beginning of the play, before
Michael's fate is known, Nora says that according to the priest, "Herself does be
saying prayers half through the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her
destitute...with no son living." Despite the priest's faith that God will not take away all
of Maurya's sons, Michael's body washes ashore, and Bartley is thrown by his horse
into the ocean. After Bartley dies, Maurya says, "They're all gone now, and there isn't
anything more the sea can do to me." In other words, she understands that the sea was
bent on taking all her sons and the other men in her life and there was no resisting this
fate; however, now that she has suffered extreme loss, she has nothing left to lose. Her
tragic destiny marks her as a tragic hero.

What role does superstition play in Riders to the Sea?

Superstition is an inordinate belief in supernatural causation that exceeds rational
bounds. Sometimes people become superstitious after a series of unfortunate events
occur because they feel there must surely be some causation to these occurrences.

Such is the case with one of the main characters of Synge's one-act play, the character
named Maurya. After the misfortunes of having lost six of her sons, this mother now
believes that something will happen to her son Bartley. Further, her fears create
suspense in the narrative of the play and generate apprehension in the audience, as
well.
Because of her fears, Maurya does not want her son Bartley to travel on the sea, and
she has even asked the local priest to talk with him. Nevertheless, Bartley insists upon
departing, sailing with two horses to the mainland where he will travel to a fair in
Galway in order to sell these horses. Before he departs, Maurya cries out as Bartley
stands in the doorway:
He's gone now, God spare us, and we'll not see him again. He's gone now, and when
the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world.

Maurya expresses a superstitious fear that she will lose Bartley because six of her
other sons have died on the sea. She also attributes supernatural powers to the sea that
"takes" her sons from her.

Previously, Maurya's daughter Cathleen and her little sister Nora have talked about
the last son's (Bartley's) departure for Galway; in this conversation, Cathleen asks
Nora if she has talked with the priest about stopping Bartley because of the turbulent
weather. Nora tells her sister what the priest has said,

"I won't stop him," says he, "but let you not be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers
half through the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her destitute," says he,
"with no son living."

To some, the priest's faith in prayer may seem rather superstitious as he places
excessive credibility in supernatural intervention because of Maurya's prayers.

The images that Maurya creates as she describes her vision of the

...fearfulest [sic] thing any person has seen, since the day Bride Dara seen the dead
man with the child in his arms

generate a terrifying tone in the narrative.

Later on, Maurya describes a vision that she has seen:

Bartley came along, and he riding on the red mare with the gray pony behind
him....and there was Michael upon it with fine clothes on him, and new shoes on his
feet.

Believing her vision to be a supernatural omen, Maurya predicts that Bartley will be
lost at sea. Tragically, she is right.

Clearly, superstitions play a key role in the narrative of Riders to the Sea as they
generate the mystery and suspense which add to the overall effect of the drama.

Why is death only related to men instead of having the death

of any of the female figures in the play?
Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge is actually a relatively realistic play. Synge, at the
urging of his friend William Butler Yeats, spent the summers from 1898 to 1903
staying in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. The play itself is loosely
based on a story Synge heard about the drowning of a fisherman.

The reason why the men in the play die but the women survive is that the men of the
family were all engaged in fishing. They spent many hours every day in wooden boats
in the rough and treacherous Atlantic Ocean, often taking great risks to bring in their
catch out of economic necessity, and being shipwrecked or drowned. Maurya refers to
this when she says:

There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would
they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him ...

For women, the major danger was childbirth, but if they did manage to survive that,
life at home taking care of livestock, cooking, sewing, and tending gardens was far
safer than fishing.

How does the setting of the play Riders to the Sea make it
both local and universal at the same time?
The setting of this short drama is the Aran islands of Ireland. That sounds like a
great location. Hawaii is awesome, so why shouldn't all islands be like that? That's
not the case with the Aran islands though. They are some of the most barren and
forlorn islands of the entire country. Life there is hard. The people that live there
are dependent on the ocean in order to earn their living and feed their families. This
means that the sea is a great provider of life, while at the same time being dangerous
enough to kill men just trying to scratch out a living. In that regard, the setting is
incredibly local and specific.

But the setting is also universal in the sense that there are locations all over the world
where men and women are struggling in a man vs. nature battle. I could even use
something as "mundane" as farming. It doesn't seem dangerous or life threatening,
but those farmers are at the mercy of the weather. If they make their crop quota,
they earn enough money to provide for their family and keep their equipment up to
date. But that same weather has the ability to destroy entire crops and bankrupt the
farmer. The drama's theme of constant hard work is universal across just about any
given population.

What are the main ideas and themes of "Riders to the Sea"
by John Synge?
I
"Riders to the Sea" by John Synge is a play about peasant life in the Aran islands of
the western coast of Ireland. The play is not overtly ideological, but does give a
heart-wrenching vision of the lives of poor, Roman Catholic Irish fisherfolk, who are
dependent on the sea for their livelihood.

The first major theme we encounter is the implacability of nature. Eight men in the
family have died from drowning. Synge shows how this experience, typical of the
area, shapes the religious and philosophical beliefs of the characters in the play,
leading them to a sort of stoical fatalism. Although they are portrayed as turning to
religion for solace, religion is not shown as actually offering consolation, but rather
encouraging resignation to their fate and a sort of passivity in face of their struggles.

Another major theme we find is an association of women with endurance in the face
of suffering.
II
One of the major themes of Riders to the Sea is the inexorability of fate. That is, fate
is inevitable, and there is nothing humans can do to stop it. At the beginning of the
play, the matriarch of the family, Maurya, hopes she can save her last remaining son
from drowning in the sea as all of her other sons and her husband have done. Despite
her efforts to stop him, her last son goes to the sea and drowns. Maurya, though bereft,
now knows that there is nothing left for the sea to take from her. A related theme is
the powerlessness of humans, including religious figures, to combat the power of
nature and of fate. Even the priest in the village cannot stop the sea from claiming
Maurya's sons and husband. Religion is powerless in the face of nature and fate.

Discuss the role of Nora in Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge.

Nora is more sympathetic to her mother while Cathleen directly challenges her mother
to be more positive, to stop her relentless, gloomy negativity. However, at first, both
daughters attempt to keep the evidence (clothes) of Michael's death from their mother,
Maurya, so that she might not lament. Eventually, Cathleen hands Maurya the clothes
confirming Michael's death. Cathleen is certainly more direct with her mother. Nora,
being the younger daughter, is a bit more passive. Maurya does seem to feel closer to
Nora and this is illustrated by the fact that Maurya, at times, addresses Nora directly;
she never addresses Cathleen. Nora also plays the role of a kind of commentator by
giving background information as the play develops. For example, when men,
offstage, are carrying in Bartley, Nora provides the description:

They're carrying a thing among them and there's water dripping out of it and leaving a
track by the big stones.

Nora does this a few times; including the words the priest has said about Michael and
that he would not stop Bartley from going out.

In Riders to the Sea, what is Cathleen hiding in the turf-loft?

The mother, Maurya, is convinced that her son, Michael, has drowned at sea. She
even tells her other remaining son, Bartley, to leave the rope so they can use it to
lower Michael into his grave when he does wash ashore. Prior to Maurya's statement
about the rope, Maurya had been in bed. Her daughters, Nora and Cathleen, were
talking. The young priest had brought an unidentified, young man's clothes and Nora
intended to find out if they are the clothes of her brother, Michael. Knowing that their
mother, Maurya, has already lost her husband, father-in-law, and four other sons,
Cathleen decides to hide the clothes so the mother will not dwell on the possibility
that they are Michael's clothes.

Cathleen: Give me the ladder, and I'll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won't
know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she'll be going down to see would
he be floating from the east.

How are the lives and beliefs of people of the Aran islands
conveyed in Riders to the Sea?
The Aran Islands, besides being an actual group of islands in the Atlantic, stood as
symbols for Synge of isolation, independence, attachment to the natural elements (in
opposition to human society and psychological “rules”). The families’ attachment to
the sea was both economic and spiritual—the dependence on fishing as a trade,
together with the automatic danger of being at the mercy of the sea’s power, even to
connect with the mainland, gradual built in the community a quasi-religious belief in
the inevitability of death at sea, with its concomitant illusions (such as Maurya’s
seeing her son’s ghost on the horse.) Interesting also is the juxtaposition of
“scientific” cause-and-effect reasoning (logic), such as identifying a drowned body by
recognizing a unique flaw in the knitting of a sweater (in real life, too, each family
had its own knitting pattern). Synge conveys these beliefs and traditions by
dramatizing the attrition of Maurya’s children, and her gradual acceptance of the
Biblical meaning of “riders to the sea.” Her acceptance of her last son’s fate is
further conveyed by Synge’s treatment of the daughters, themselves inevitably future
mothers of future dead sons. Synge’s other important “isolation” play, Playboy of
the Western World, continues to dramatize the dichotomy between social “laws” and
the “laws” of Nature (sexual attraction, alienation of generations, etc.), but here in a
comic motif.

Although the sea is unseen in the play, it is a living presence

in "Riders to the Sea." Please discuss.
A "Character" in a play is an active participant in the drama, the conflict. The main
character, the "protagonist", goes through changes in character or worldview. But
mant other characters, sometimes called "Horatio" characters, serve various other
functions--to help "visualize" the draaaaama, etc. Here, the sea acts as the
"antigonist"--the force fighting or in conflict with the protagonist (here, the mother).
Of course, the sea does not change ("No man can be living forever, and we must be
satisfied.") As for not appearing on stage, there are many occasions in drama when
an important dramatic component is referred to only. For example, General Gabler,
Hedda's father, like the sea, a driving force.

The relationship of natural and supernatural elements in

J.M Synge's Riders to the Sea.
In Synge's Riders to the Sea, natural elements, including the sea, have supernatural
qualities. The sea, which has claimed Maurya's husband and five of her six sons, has a
supernatural force to it. Religion is powerless to defeat it.

At the beginning of the play, Cathleen, one of the daughters, asks if the priest can stop
Bartley, the one remaining son, from going to sea to sell his horse. Nora, her sister,
responds:

"I won't stop him," says he, "but let you not be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers
half through the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her destitute," says he,
"with no son living."

In other words, the priest is powerless to prevent the deaths of both Micheal (the son
who dies at the beginning of the play) and Bartley, the son who dies at the end of the
play. Instead, the sea claims both of them, and Maurya's prayers cannot defeat the
power of the seemingly supernatural sea.

At the end of the play, Maurya says, "They're all gone now, and there isn't anything
more the sea can do to me. . . . I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when
the wind breaks from the south." In other words, by the end of the play, it is clear that
the power of the supernatural that is invested in nature is more powerful than religion.
Maurya has no more reason to pray, as it's obvious that the supernatural can defeat her
prayers.

In Synge's Riders to the Sea, what does Cathleen hide in the

turf-loft, and how does this add to the dramatic entrance of
Maurya?
In Synge's Riders to the Sea, Cathleen hides a "bundle" given to her by the area's
young priest in the turf-loft. The bundle is a "shirt and a plain stocking were got off
a drowned man in Donegal." The priest suggests Nora and Cathleen examine the
bundle and determine whether or not the clothes belong to their brother, Michael, who
was previously lost at sea. The two sisters are to examine the bundle when Maurya
is out of the house "down looking by the sea." The priest and the sisters want to find
out if the clothes belong to Michael without upsetting Maurya. When Nora hears
Maurya stirring in her bedroom (waking up from her nap), Cathleen hurries to hide
the bundle before Maurya enters and sees it. Introducing the bundle immediately
creates suspense and conflict in the play. The audience will now be wondering
whether or not the clothes belong to Michael until the sisters get a chance to examine
it later in the play. Hiding the bundle does also add dramatically to Maurya's
entrance in that it creates a sense of urgency as the audience watches to see if
Cathleen gets it hdden before Maurya sees it.

Does the play fit the definition of the tragedy? What

supportive evidences can you present?
Synge's Riders to the Sea is definitely a tragedy.

Fate is the governing force in Riders, as it often is in Greek tragedy. Maurya and her
family have only one means of survival--the sea. The men are doomed because the
same sea they must travel to earn a living will sooner or later destroy them. Maurya
is trapped by forces she cannot control and cannot even understand.

Maurya suffers through the loss of nine males, including her husband and all of her
sons, and she only reaches any kind of resolution or peace when she finally has
nothing left to lose.

The family is, in effect, wiped out by a force beyond its control. Notice the weaving
occurring when the play opens--this is in imitation of and an allusion to the Greek
fates who weave human destiny. Notice how Michael's fate is determined by how a
sock was stitched.
Synge mixes Irish myth with Greek myth to form his tragedy, but for your purposes,
the above should establish that the play is a tragedy in the Greek tradition.

What conflicts are present in John Synge's Riders to the

Sea?
John Synge's Riders to the Sea is filled with complex conflicts. Dominating the lives
of the play's Irish peasant characters is fate. Fate is the sea, fate is an existence that
provides no means for a young man to support himself and his family other than
travelling on that sea. Fate is an existence that takes the lives of a mother's husband,
father-in-law, and six sons. Fate is the reality of existence for the play's characters.
It is the natural world that they cannot control and cannot understand. Other
conflicts are also present. The mother's desire to protect her son clashes with the
son's need to be on the sea and travel and engage in meaningful business, for instance.
But the central conflict of the play concerns fate, and it climaxes when Maurya sees
Michael's ghost following Bartley on the gray pony and when Bartley's body is
brought into the cottage.

Why should we call Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge a poetic

drama?
J.M. Synge is famous among Irish authors for attempting to capture the unique sound
and rhythm of the native Irish accent. To do so, he travelled on several occasions to
the Aran Islands, a remote region celebrated for its traditional culture and customs.
Synge supposedly based the dialogue in his plays on the Irish dialect he heard during
his travels, and his efforts have drawn both praise and criticism. However, whether or
not you believe Synge's writing to be an accurate representation of English spoken
with an Irish accent, the language in his plays is undeniably poetic and lyrical, and so
it would be accurate to call Riders to the Sea a poetic drama.

Take, for instance, this quote: "I'll have no call now to be up and crying and praying
when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the
surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the
other" (42). This lyrical description, which takes place late in the play, is a small
example of Synge's prodigious literary powers, and it describes the violence and
ferocity of the sea in truly majestic terms. Additionally, the speech has a pronounced
rhythmic quality that quickly reminds one of poetic verse. Synge's plays, including
Riders, are filled with examples of such finely-crafted writing, and for that reason you
would be justified in calling Riders a poetic drama.