Hons/3rd Year/Paper VI/Drama/ Riders to the Sea … S.

ROY

Riders to the Sea

J. M. Singe

1. Significance of the Title Riders to the Sea

The title Riders to the Sea apparently suggests to us that the story is concerned with sea, to some extent. But
it also has a symbolical undertone which arouses our sense of mysticism.

Thematically the significance of the title is obvious. The main folk in a fisher family always put to sea to
earn their living and they often have to ride part of their way. So, in a sense, they are all ‘riders’.

The theme of human suffering and death evoked by the title is not only shocking but also thought provoking.
The precarious condition of human existence is represented by Michael, Bartley and all the male members of
the family who left for the sea quite hopefully but never return leaving the mother utterly destitute of sons.

The image of the horse, inseparably connected with the rider, has its symbolic significance, as well. In the
Bible, the horse is a symbol of intelligence. It seems to signify that man must master his instinct in the same
way that the rider masters his horse. Traditionally, in the east as well as in the West, the horse is a symbol of
physical energy. In the catacombs the horse is a common emblem and seems to typify the transitoriness of
life. In one of Yeats’s poems, ‘Under Ben Bulben’, the horseman represents the soul on its physical journey
through life:
Caste a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

The second part of the play’s title ‘the sea’, is even more significant. Riders to the Sea is basically a play
about man’s active struggle with the sea and woman’s passive suffering. The sea here symbolizes the destiny
of the Aran people, that it is the ultimate destination of their earthly race or their predestined grave. The sea
reminds us of those primitive gods of whom Gloucester says:
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.

But like Shelley’s West Wind the sea in Riders to the Sea is preserver as well as a destroyer. The sea is the
only thoroughfare, and provides them with fish and cheap minerals. This both emotional and utilitarian
relationship with the sea is beautifully expressed by T. R. Henn:
Of this archetypal native is man’s conflict with the sea, the giver and taker of life.

“It is the life of a young man to be going on the sea” – these words of Cathleen sum up the vital role that the
sea plays in the life of the young men of the Islands. At last at the end of the play, after the mighty and
monstrous sea has ended its sport with Maurya by delivering the last fatal blow, the restless Maurya becomes
the pattern of quietitude and kneel down in perfect solemnity and serenity in mood of complete surrender:
They’re all gone now, and there is’nt anything more the sea can do to me.

In the book of Exodus, we come to know that the horses of Pharaoh perished into the sea because it was
preplanned by God. We are not sure that Synge also thought so. But the journey of the riders is somewhat
destined – they are all ‘Riders’ to the ‘Sea’.

2. Maurya as a Tragic Figure – “The tragedy of Riders to the Sea becomes more lurid by being
presented through the medium of the old mother, Maurya, with her mental obsessions and
deep-rooted superstitious view of life.” Discuss.

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Few characters in modern English drama have been so warmly admired and minutely analyzed as Maurya,
the protagonist of the play Riders to the Sea. This appears all the more remarkable when we think of the
restricted space of the one act in which this character is developed, and of her social insignificance and
infirmities of her age, her superstitions and extreme poverty. Here in this masterpiece Synge has turned so-
called limitations into new resources, and created a truly tragic figure whose vision of life reminds us of the
Greek tragedians.

At the beginning of the play, Maurya is hardly any better than a tedious old fool, an irritant woman who is
nagging all the time. But later all this undergoes a change – and a sea-change it is. We might as well say that
there are two Mauryas in the play. The first Maurya is more of a pagan woman, afflicted by bereavements,
and ruefully bemoaning her loss. When the play opens, we find that she is constantly lamenting the loss at
the sea of her son, Michael, as well as the earlier drowning of her husband and four other sons. Her grief is
further aggravated the moment Cathleen mentions Bartley’s intended journey to the Galway air. She tried her
best to prevent him from going to the sea. Twice she says, “He won’t go this day”. But she could not hold
the wheel of fate. His last surviving son is also “washed out”.

This last blow of the inscrutable destiny bring about a sea change in Maurya. The ever-keening woman is
entirely transformed and gained a tragic grandeur facing the anagnorisis – a great tragic knowledge about
life. Maurya’s years of mourning are complete. Overcoming her suffering she exclaims almost stoically:
They are gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me.
The wheel comes full circle. Now, more than ever, she feels that behind “the sorry schemes of things entire”
there is some demonic force with an insatiable thirst for human victims. And this force she naturally equates
with the sea, her life-long antagonist. Freed at long last from its clutches, she is now greatly relieved. The
restless Maura now becomes the pattern of quietitude and kneels down in perfect solemnity and serenity in a
mood of complete surrender:
No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.

This will surely remind us of the celebrated words in Dante’s Paradiso : “and His will is our peace”. What
is needed is total surrender. It is this that we find in the case of Maurya at the end of Synge’s great one act
play which is at the same time a fine tragedy. It is that makes our compassion for the tragic heroine ripen into
admiration.

3. Riders to the Sea as a One-Act Play

The one-act play, a twentieth century phenomenon, has established itself as an independent dramatic form.
Being concise and limited, the one-act play demands much concentration and deep observation of the
playwright. But it is not at all a miniature five-act. According to Samuel Beckett, the one-act play is the
‘drama of emotion and atmosphere’. It is the dramatic equivalent of a short story and tends to concentrate on
a single episode or situation. The concept of three unities is followed with great care.

Riders to the Sea is unique in dramatic history, for it is the only one-act play that can be described as a
tragedy in the fullest sense. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to create in a one-act play the splendid
tragic majesty that is more usually found in a five-act drama.

By strictly observing the three unities, Synge has proved Riders to the Sea as a successful one-act play with
no subplots or digression. The life of the Aran Islands is depicted beautifully by introducing only four
characters on the stage and they are vividly drawn as well as sharply differentiated. Cathleen being elder
sister is much responsible than Nora, who is a girl with immature mind. Whereas Bartley, the only surviving
son of the family, is highly determined and deeply involved in his business. In one-act play it is almost
impossible to expect such characterization.

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It is in the end that we are informed about the drowning of other male members of the family in the reverie of
Maurya. This revelation causes the play to move swiftly to the climax. Thus much is informed to us only in a
limited span of time, giving much coherence to the unity of time. In order to highlight the tragedy of Maurya
in limited time certain characters do not appear on the stage, such as, the priest.

In one-act play, the material should be minimal and the dramatic effect must be maximum, which could be
produced only by language. Based on the speech of the Aran Islanders, this language is both poetic and real.
The tragic effect is emphasized by the dignity of economized language. The very beginning of the play
suggests us the wretched condition of Maurya, by only three words : “If she’s able”.

Few characters in modern English drama have been so warmly admired and minutely analyzed as Maurya,
the protagonist of this play. This appears all the more remarkable when we think of the restricted space of the
one-act in which this character is developed. In a single act she an ordinary mother rises to a great tragic
intensity. This psychic change of Maurya culminates in a mood of complete surrender which is very close to
the Aristotelian concept of catharsis.

What is particularly interesting about the play is, Synge’s ability to compress the great issues of life into one
act, to intensify one particular death into general human tragedy, and to convey local events as archetypal
and thereby possessing lasting significance. It is no wonder that Frank Vernon asserts that Riders to the Sea
is a local play which is made universal.

4. Riders to the Sea as a Tragedy / Greek Tragedy

Riders to the Sea is unique in dramatic history, for it is the only one-act play that can be described as a
tragedy in the fullest sense. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to create in a one-act play the splendid
tragic majesty that is more usually found in a five-act drama.

Riders to the Sea is perhaps the first real tragedy of low life in English literature. Greek and Elizabethan
dramatists assume that a tragedy can be written only when the theme is the suffering of those who are highly
placed in society. Riders to the Sea is concerned with a fisher family of Ireland’s west. It is here that Synge
finds elemental tragedy.

The tragic conflict in the play is the conflict between life and the dangers of the sea.
Of this archetypal native is man’s conflict with the sea, the giver and taker of life.
The play is basically about man’s active struggle with the sea and woman’s passive suffering. Death seemed
to stalk through the Island and its most common disguise was in the form of the sea.

Maurya, the tragic protagonist of the play, is the very embodiment of suffering. She presents mankind itself,
for suffering is the badge of the human tribe. This suffering can be transformed into glory through the
splendour of surrender to the divine dispensation. By achieving this glory Maurya clearly reveals how an
ordinary person can rise to extraordinary heights merely through self-surrender. This psychic change of
Maurya culminates in “calm of mind, all passion spent” which is very close to the Aristotelian concept of
catharsis. She is in no sense a spirited woman like Sophocles’s Antigone or even Synge’s own Deirdre; yet
she undoubtedly belongs to the class of great tragic heroines.

The play also resembles a Greek tragedy in so far as fate here is predominant. The dark fatalism of Greek
tragic drama has lent a special solemnity to the play which reminds us too strongly of Goucester’s words in
King Lear.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.
The irony of the play also resembles Greek tragedy. Synge, at times, reaches to the depth and subtlety of
Sophoclean irony, as, for example, the time when Maurya says

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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.

There is, however, no chorus in the play. But a few utterances, such as, some of Maurya are essentially
choric. The play is also marked by anagnorisis and peripetia. The two cases of ‘recognition’ are the girls’
identification of their brother’s body and at the end of the play the realization that the body carried in by the
men is not of Michael but of Bartley. All these naturally lead to a ‘reversal’
They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me....

Perhaps it is best to describe the play as an elegiac tragedy. Hardly in any other tragedy is there such a
poignant tone of kenning. Pathos is writ large in the play, in which mourning becomes Maurya.

5. Role of the Sea in Riders to the Sea

The title of Synge’s play, Riders to the Sea, itself suggests how important role the sea plays throughout this
one-act tragedy. Riders to the Sea is basically a play about man’s active struggle with the sea and woman’s
passive suffering. The people of the Aran Island lived a precarious life which Synge described in his essay
‘The Aran Islands’. When living on this Island, Synge had the feeling that he was communicating with
people who lived in ‘a world of grey’. Death seemed to stalk through the Island and its most common
disguise was in the form of the sea.

The sea in Riders to the Sea, therefore, symbolizes the destiny of the Aran people, suggests that it is the
ultimate destination of their earthly race or their predestined grave. The sea reminds us of those primitive
gods of whom Gloucester says:
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.

But like Shelley’s West Wind the sea in Riders to the Sea is preserver as well as a destroyer. The sea is the
only thoroughfare, and provides them with fish and cheap minerals. The heroic fortitude and rugged beauty
of their life are largely the gift of the sea. And as for its tyranny, it has made living formidable in these places
where each new morn new widows haul, new orphans cry and new sorrows strike heaven on the face. This
both emotional and utilitarian relationship with the sea beautifully expressed by T. R. Henn:
Of this archetypal native is man’s conflict with the sea, the giver and taker of life.

“It is the life of a young man to be going on the sea” – these words of Cathleen sum up the vital role that the
sea plays in the life of the young men of the Islands. Their sailing vessels are manned by men whose bodies
are later washed ashore on the rocks. The sea is the destructive agent that sacrificially devours and consumes
more then half of Maurya’s family. The noise of the sea is always heard in the play, most of the time literally
but sometimes also figuratively. At the very beginning of the play, Cathleen asks her sister: “Is the sea bad
by the white rocks, Nora?” Nora replies: “Midling bad, God help us”. Actually, when the tide turns, Bartley
is later drowned by the white rocks. The symbolic value of the tide is obvious: it is the tide of life and death.

Riders to the Sea is a fatalistic tragedy and the sea here has been rightly called “fate personified”. At last at
the end of the play, after the mighty and monstrous sea has ended its sport with Maurya by delivering the last
fatal blow, the restless Maurya becomes the pattern of quietitude and kneel down in perfect solemnity and
serenity in mood of complete surrender:
They’re all gone now, and there is’nt anything more the sea can do to me.
Maurya will no longer care “what way the sea is when the other women will be keening”.

The sea, thus, becomes the pivot of the play. All talks seem to harp on it. In a sense, the sea is the great hero-
villain of the play.

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6. Riders to the Sea as a Poetic Drama

Yeats, Eliot and Synge, who had achieved a revival of the poetic drama in the 20th century, had been
reacting against the contemporary Prose play of Ideas popularized by Ibsen. These dramatists felt that the
prose play emphasized mainly on urban life and its contemporary problems. Realizing that urban life had
become superficially sophisticated but devitalized, they attempted to highlight in their plays those forms of
existence that were beyond the premises of modern society, still possessing spontaneity, emotion and
imagination.

Synge has discovered this kind of life amongst the fishing community of the Aran Islands in the remote
northwestern corner of Ireland. The perpetual battle of the islanders against the ruthless sea is a theme that
could be full expressed only through the suggestive, symbolic and lyrical power of poetry. Though Synge’s
medium is prose, he enlivens it with the rhythms and cadences of poetry and revives a poetic idiom that
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides had used for tragedy.

Commenting on the power of verse in expressing human emotions, T. S. Eliot had observed, “…the human
soul, in intense emotion strives to express itself in verse…the tendency…of prose is to emphasize the
ephemeral and the superficial”. According to Eliot, words are so much trivialized in their everyday prose-
contexts of usage that they lose their suggestive power. In poetry, these same words are revitalized with
special meaning and significance. It is for this reason that Synge had relied on poetic prose in his tragic one-
act lay play.

In Riders to the Sea, Synge depicts the passion and heroism that he finds among the Aran fishermen. Their
lives convey man’s universal struggle against adversity and destiny. These experiences could only be
appropriately expressed through a medium of poetic prose. Maurya, Bartley, Nora and Cathleen are defined
by emotion and not intellect. They respond to life with passion, imagination and intuition; not with reason. In
their daily relationship with the sea, they come to understand its mystery and horror. In this context Synge
has stated – “in countries where the imagination of the people and the language they use, are rich and living,
it’s possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words.” This is highly appropriate for Synge’s play in
which the beauty of the poetic idiom can be identified with the emotional intensity of the characters.

The evocative power of poetic prose can be fully felt in Maurya’s transformation from a baffled grief-
stricken mother to a prophet-like mind, having achieved sublime wisdom out of suffering. Though she is
initially overpowered by loss, she finally achieves a profound universal vision of life and death, a lofty
sympathy for mankind and a deep faith in God. Such a profound transcendence would only be recorded in
poetic prose, as evident in the following words of Maurya – “may the Almighty God have mercy…everyone
left living in the world” the poetic beauty and the elegiac power of these lines remind of Oedipus’s
transcendence in Sophocles’s play and Samson’s sublimation of grief in Milton’s play.

Synge’s use of symbolism in the play has also been facilitated by the use of poetic prose. As the play is
prevailed over by a brooding sense of dark destiny, the reference to many superstitions and occult beliefs had
become necessary for the dramatist. The play reflects an almost pagan attitude to life in which the universe is
believed to be controlled by dark and malicious powers. The paganism, the superstitions and the
supernaturalism presented in the play would have become unconvincing and implausible in a prose context.
The poetic prose evolves an appropriate atmosphere of premonition and ill omen for the proper
representation of these ideas. Many of these superstitious beliefs are alluded to through a menacing use of
expressions like ‘black night’, ‘black cliff’, ‘black knot’, ‘dark word’, and ‘the pig with black feet’. The
repetition of ‘black’ and ‘dark’ in a poetic context creates a brooding atmosphere of apprehension.

The resemblance between Synge’s poetic prose and the verse tragic drama of the classical playwrights is
evident. Reminiscent of classical poetic tragedy, Synge’s play also includes the supernatural. In Maurya’s
supernatural vision witnessed at the spring-well, the red mare that Bartley rides on symbolizes life and the

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gray pony on which Maurya sees Michael’s spectre is the very emblem of death. The vision foreshadows
Bartley’s death that occurs in the course of the play. The full significance of Maurya’s vision could never
have been conveyed in a prose play. Poetic prose lends a special prophetic power to it.

Synge derives the poetic idiom through the combination of English vocabulary and Gaelic grammar. While
the diction is mainly English, the syntax, the rhythm and the cadences are Gaelic. The language seems to
reverberate with the lyrical powers of the language of the Bible. The full effect of such an idiom can be
understood in some of the most elegiac lines that are touched by tenderness, pathos and tragic beauty as in
Nora’s lamentation over Michael’s death – “…isn’t is a pitiful thing when there is nothing left of a man who
was a great rower and fisher but a bit of an old shirt and a plain stocking?”

The rhythmic quality of the language is strengthened by the regular bit of the iambic metre this is
complimented by the dramatic gestures and actions that would have appeared unnatural in a prose-play. This
is evident in the ritual of keening for the dead that the Aran islanders perform to express their grief and
mourning. The choric keening would have lost its somber and solemn beauty, had Synge not used poetic
prose, full of the accents, intonations and rhythms and Anglo-Gaelic.

The poetic medium in Riders to the Sea has made it possible for Synge to overcome the limitations of the
prose play. It enables Synge to attribute depth, beauty and universal significance to a play that may have
otherwise been impaired by its brevity. The poetic prose has placed Synge’s play in the age-old tradition of
poetic tragedy that had reached excellence in the hands of Sophocles and Shakespeare.

7. Would you regard “Riders to the Sea” as a tragedy of particular community, or a statement of
the general human condition? Give reasons.

The very limitations of the space and time of the play opens up vistas of possibilities for universal meaning.
The smallness of the island makes it symbolic enough to contain the whole universe. The four people in the
play ultimately grow big in size in such a manner that they become the prototypes of the whole humanity and
its tragic fate. Their struggle against the cruel, hungry foam of the sea becomes the symbol of the eternal
struggle of man against the odds of Nature. Riders to the Sea is simultaneously a play about a particular place
on the map and a document of the universal human struggle.

The local color of the setting of the play is unmistakably sharp. The islands with their loneliness, poverty and
forbidding surroundings are vividly portrayed. Situated on the Galway Bay, the island of Riders to the Sea
consists mostly of barren lands and grey rocks. There is no greenery to relieve the sense of weariness, and
the landscape is desolate. The regional quality of the play is clear not only from the manner in which the
characters speak but also from the way their beliefs and habits are depicted. Not only their economic
condition but also their beliefs and customs give these particular people their local identity cut off from the
mainstream of Irish civilization. Like the primitive people, they were shadowed by age-old customs and
rituals. Omens and forebodings pervade the play.

But the local and regional appeal of the play should not stop us from seeing its universal quality; the tragedy
in the play is not that of a woman belonging to one of the Aran Islands. It is a human tragedy which has
relevance to all climes.The sea stands not only for itself but symbolizes the cosmic forces inimical to man.
Riders to the Sea reminds us of the ancient classical tragedies in which fate was the principal foe of human
beings. Maurya like Oedipus or Cassandra is also foredoomed to suffer.

When the play opens Maurya had just lost a son, Michael to the sea. Her last surviving son, Bartley, is
getting ready to make the journey to the mainland. Maurya tries her utmost to prevent him from going
because she fears that Bartley too may be lost. But fate has already decided that Maurya should have no son
left, she has no way of escaping from his fate. While her fate deeply moves us, we also realize that her case
is not a unique one. Women all over the world undergo a similar agony of sufferings. The feeling of loss for
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a mother, the anguish of the bereaved heart is everywhere the same. Maurya is the universal mother, whining
and lamenting for the brave sons who go out to fight the world, never to return. Maurya is the very
embodiment of suffering. She presents mankind itself, for suffering is the badge of the human tribe. This
suffering can be transformed into glory through the splendour of surrender to the divine dispensation. By
achieving this glory Maurya clearly reveals how an ordinary person can rise to extraordinary heights merely
through self-surrender.

8. The Story of Bride Dara in Synge’s Riders to The Sea:

In J.M.Synges play “Riders to the Sea”, the Bride Dara is mentioned by Maurya, the mother of Bartley and
Michael. The Bride Dara must like Maurya had a vision of loved ones who were dead.

It actually refers to the story which Synge heard from an old man and recorded in “The Aran Islands”:
‘There was a young woman’, he said, ‘she had a child. In a little while the woman dies and
they buried her the day after. That night another woman – a woman of the family – was
sitting by the fire with the child on her lap, giving milk to it out of a cup. Then the woman
they were after burying (i.e. had buried) opened the door, and came into the house. She went
over to the fire, and she took a stool and sat down before the other woman. Then she put out
her hand and took the child on her lap, and gave it her breast…’

Here is, however, a slight alteration made by Synge. In place of a woman taking the child on her lap we have
here ‘the dead man with the child in his arms’.

“Bride” is an archaic form of the name “Brigid,” one of the great pagan Goddesses of Ireland. Brigid was
later “Christianized” and turned into one of the Catholic saints, who founded a double monastary and
convent in Cill-Dara. “Bride Dara” is therefore a sort of shorthand way of saying “Brigid of Dara.” Many of
the myths surrounding the Goddess Brigid were tacked on to the saint by the common Irish people. One of
these stories is of the death of Brigid’s son. The story says that she invented keening while mourning the
death of her son on the battlefield. This is the origin of Maura’s allusion.

9. The number ‘nine’ in Synge’s Riders to The Sea:

The number nine is a magical number and it is a symbol of bad luck. In Irish and Norse legends, the number
nine is connected to suffering, relating to Odin’s nine days on the tree and also relating to the nine wave-
daughters of the sea, who with their mother, may possibly be symboliclly implicated in the drowning deaths
of the seafaring men. These legends were part of the shaping influence of the Aran Islanders.

The repeated use of the number nine Synge’s play Riders to The Sea bears the testimony of the playwright’s
attempt to faithfully portray the life of the Aran Islanders, with their superstitious belief and conventions. It
is used in different places in this play. In the play we see that Maurya suffers nine days of keening and
mourning over her missing son. There were nine days alloted to looking for Maurya’s son who was missing
and presumed dead by Maurya, Bartley, and the two daughters.

When the play starts Maurya says to Nora, “Michael is washed up tomorrow morning or the next morning or
any morning in the week….” If we total up these mornings we get the number nine. When Bartley died nine
unknown women came to Maurya’s house. In the last part of the play Cathleen said, “An old woman…….
she will do, and isn’t it nine days herself is after crying and keening. ” In a speech Mourya says to Cathleen,
“I’ll have half an hour to go down and you’ll see me coming again in 2 days, or in 3 days, or maybe in 4
days if the wind is bad.”

It is shortly after Bartley mentions the fair that the number nine is introduced into the play. In connection
with the missing Michael, Bartley says: “and we after looking each day for nine days.”
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The number nine is mentioned twice again in the play, once again speaking of Michael: “for when a man is
nine days in the sea...” This is a reference to the drowned man, and later, when Maurya’s grieving is
discussed: “And isn’t it nine days herself is after crying...”

Synge’s use of number nine also conjures up many Irish legends which are interlinked with the life of the
Islanders. In the ancient Irish legend of Finn and Diarmuid, Finn would have to walk “nine footsteps” to
save Diarmuid to the well with the best water in the world. Wells in pagan Ireland were sacred to the Celtic
people. There are many instances where the number nine is used as a magical formula for attaining the
desired results besides this story of Diarmuid. Nine days or nights’ time was linked to legends of sacrifice,
the difficult days preceding good ones and proverbial darkness before the dawn, a union of the immortal sea
with mortal flesh.

Explanations

1. “... No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.” – Explain.

This is the last line of Singe’s play Riders to the Sea. This is perhaps the most moving line of the play and it
also conveys the moral of the play. This is Maurya’s spontaneous outburst after she achieves the great tragic
knowledge about life when her last surviving son is also lost in the sea. The line suggests Maurya’s
metamorphosis from an ordinary mother to the level of a great tragic heroine.

When the play opens, we find that she is constantly lamenting the loss at the sea of her son, Michael, as well
as the earlier drowning of her husband and four other sons. Her grief is further aggravated the moment
Cathleen mentions Bartley’s intended journey to the Galway air. She tried her best to prevent him from going
to the sea. But nobody can change one’s fortune and thus, Bartley does perish at the end of the play.
Maurya’s years of mourning are complete. The wheel comes full circle. Now, more than ever, she feels that
behind “the sorry schemes of things entire” there is some demonic force with an insatiable thirst for human
victims. And this force she naturally equates with the sea, her life-long antagonist. Freed at long last from its
clutches, she is now greatly relieved.

The restless Maura now becomes the pattern of quietitude and kneels down in perfect solemnity and serenity
in a mood of complete surrender. Maurya here represents mankind itself, for suffering is the badge of the
human tribe. This suffering can be transformed into glory through the splendour of surrender to the divine
dispensation. By achieving this glory Maurya clearly reveals how an ordinary person can rise to
extraordinary heights merely through self-surrender.

Maurya’s final utterance surely remind us of the celebrated words in Dante’s Paradiso : “and His will is our
peace”. It is this peace that we have at the end of Riders to the Sea, “for peace comes drooping slow”.

“Be still, and know that I am God” – sings the Psalmist. This is the voice which is ringing all the time within
us. The more quietly and effectively we listen to this inner voice, the better we shall be able to surrender
ourselves to God. What is needed is total surrender. It is this that we find in the case of Maurya at the end of
Synge’s great one act play which is at the same time a fine tragedy. It is that makes our compassion for the
tragic heroine of the play ripen into admiration.

Short Questions

1. What are the heroic qualities in the character of Maurya?

Ans: If we look at the character of Maurya, we see that she wages a struggle against the sea and emerges
sublime. Her heroism emerges in the capacity she shows for suffering and endurance. Finally she rises to the
height of tragic heroine when she transcends her personal grief and prays for every soul.
2. Who are the main characters of Riders to the sea?
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Ans: In Synge’s tragedy Riders to the Sea the main characters are Maurya, her daughter’s Cathleen, Nora,
Bartley and of course the sea itself.
3. Write about the sources of income of the people of the island described in Riders to the Sea.
Ans: The people described in Synge’s play Riders to the Sea are basically half civilized and poor people of
the island. Their main source of income is seafaring. Besides farming, domesticating livestocks, brewing and
smuggling illicit whisky are all their sources of income.
4. “Cathleen stops her wheel with a sudden movement.” What does the stopping of the wheel
suggest?
Ans: The stopping of the wheel with a jerk suggests that the clothes in the bundle belong to Michael and that
he is drowned.
5. What is a Galway fair?
Ans: Galway is a trade centre visited by the islanders, and in the fairs, held regularly in the larger towns,
horses, cattle and sheep are bought and sold.
6. “the hooker’s tacking from the east” What is a ‘hooker’?
Ans: The ‘hooker’ (<Dutch hockey <hock hook) is a small Irish fishing vessel used for trade purposes in the
coastal region of Galway. These boats carry hay, turf, cattle, horses, etc.
7. “another cock for the kelp” Explain the meaning of the words ‘cock’ and ‘kelp’.
Ans: Here ‘cock’ is a small pile of hay, straw, etc. with vertical sides and a rounded top. ‘Kelp’ is seaweed
which is burnt for cheap minerals found in the ashes.
8. What does the word ‘poteen’ mean?
Ans: Poteen (Irish potin, diminutive of pota pot) is an Irish whisky made illicitly from potatoes, oats or rye.
The drink has quite a kick, and in Synge’s time, was the cause of many a death by drowning in a state of
drunkenness. Synge himself relished it.
9. What is the meaning of the word ‘keen’?
Ans: Keen (Irish caoine < caoinim wail) is an Irish custom of lamenting for the dead.
10. What does the ‘black hags’ suggest?
Ans: Here ‘hags’ does not mean ‘witches’. (‘Hoes’ now, you secret, black, and midnight hags I’ – Macbeth,
IV.i.) These are cormorants hovering over the dead floating in the sea, and are considered ominous by the
Aran people.
11. What does the word ‘curagh’ mean?
Ans: Curagh is a small boat of wickerwork covered with watertight material, used on Welsh and Irish lakes
and rivers. These boats are ‘long’, with up-covered bow and very low free-board; keelless and made out of
lath and tarred canvas. They are used for travel in seas that are fatal for any other craft; but are fragile and
unstable.
12. What is “Samhain”?
Ans: “Samhain” (pronounced ‘sowin’) is November Eve or Hallowe’en celebrated by the Celts as a festival
marking the beginning of winter. According to Henn, it is the feast of the dead in pagan and Christian times.
It extends for several days and is believed to be the time when ghosts may walk and demons plague the earth.
13. Explain the significance of the ‘Holy Water’.
Ans: It is not known the exact place from which the Aran islanders collect Holy Water. Synge himself is
silent on this. However, we may presume that Maurya may have collected the water from some sacred well,
or even from the spring well mentioned in the play. But it is important that she did it only in the dark nights
after Samhain and she had to wait for the rest of the year to replenish her stock. When she sprinkles Holy
Water over Michael’s clothes, we know that she is using the last few drops. The association of the Water
with Samhain makes it much more the magic water of pre-Christian belief than the water blessed by the
priests.
14. “I’ve seen the fearfullest thing” – What does the speaker suggest by this?/ Describe “the
fearfullest thing” that Maurya has seen. Mention the incident with which she compares her
experience.
Ans: This foreboding line is uttered by Maurya in J.M.Synge’s play Riders to the Sea. The line alludes to the
story of Bride Dara who like Maurya had a vision of loved ones who were dead. It actually refers to the story
which Synge heard from an old man and recorded in “The Aran Islands”. The story says that Bride Dara or

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Brigid invented keening while mourning the death of her son on the battlefield. This is the origin of Maura’s
allusion which suggests that Bartley is also going to die.
15. How does Synge describe Maurya’s cottage (its setting and properties) at the beginning of
Riders to the Sea?
Ans: The very setting as described by Synge himself shows that Maurya’s household is under the shadow of
death. When Synge describes the opening scene in the cottage kitchen he mentions the presence of nets,
oilskins, spinning-wheel, and some new boards standing by the wall. The presence of the new board signifies
that death had already visited Maurya’s cottage (for boards are necessary for coffin making) and in the
process will revisit it.
16. Who are the relatives that Maurya lost and who still survive?
Ans. On her own confession Maurya had a husband, a husband’s father and six sons. All of them are dead
and gone, the last one, her only surviving son Bartley perishing in course of the play. Her daughters —
Cathleen and Nora — however still survive perhaps because unlike the male members of the family they are
home-stayers, not obliged to follow the fishing profession.
17. Why does Maurya call Eamon? What is ironical about this?
Ans: Mauriya resigns herself to the fact that Bartley is going to die. She is so distraught that she asks Nora
and Cathleen to call in Emon, a local woodworker, to make a coffin for Bartley. The irony of the fact is that
Maurya actually bought the white boards to make a coffin for Michael. Now Michael’s body having washed
away in the sea, the white boards were used to make a coffin for her next son Bartley who was also destined
to die.
18. Bring out two features from Greek Classical drama which occur in Riders to the Sea.
Ans: The play resembles a Greek tragedy in so far as fate here is predominant. The dark fatalism of Greek
tragic drama has lent a special solemnity. The play is also marked by anagnorisis and peripetia. The two
cases of ‘recognition’ are the girls’ identification of their brother’s body and at the end of the play the
realization that the body carried in by the men is not of Michael but of Bartley.
19. How would you account for Maurya’s “calm of mind” after Bartley’s death?
Ans. Maurya’s self-control and silence are, according to Nora, due to her fondness for Michael, and
according to Cathleen, due to her tiredness after nine days of “Crying and Keening”. Maurya’s composure
may also seem to our to a state of stupefaction or even to stais. But to my mind her “calm of mind” is due to
her realization of the essence of the spiritual truth as represented in Dante’s famous line “In la sua volontade
è nostra pace” (i.e. in His will is our peace).
20. How does Synge heighten the tragic atmosphere in Riders to the Sea?
Ans: The play opens in a mournful atmosphere and this atmosphere is gradually heightened by the dramatist
through hints and forebodings of the impending tragedy. Synge makes the tragedy very lurid by making
Maurya her own mouthpiece. Her description of the past deaths in the family makes the atmosphere very
tragic. Her reference to ominous signs and spectres add a lurid touch to the play.
21. Who were the riders to the sea and why were they so called? /Justify the title Riders to the Sea.
Ans. We are told of Bartley riding a red mare followed by Michael riding a gray pony. The title justifies
itself by referring, among others, to these to riders—the quick and the dead—and suggesting the superstitious
and supernatural elements fused in the play.

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English Coaching for — M.A., Hons., and S.S.C.
 SUMIT ROY (Hons., M.A., N.E.T. Qualified); Research Scholar (University of Kalyani);
Author of “Books Way Guide to K.U. English Honours”
 Address: B-13/92, Kalyani, Nadia (L. Ph 033-25823306, Mob Ph 8902174762)
Coaching Centres at Kalyani and Krishnanagar.
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