Riders to the Sea John Millington Synge\'s

Riders to the Sea

John Millington Synge's poetic drama and one-act play Riders to the Sea is an understated look at a family's relationship with the sea, at a time when it provided both the sustenance and eventual death for a substantial number of men. The play uses the familiar trope of the wife and mother worried about her male family members dying at sea, but it complicates this trope by examining what happens when the ambivalent connection between a woman and the sea is finally broken. By examining the first scene of the play alongside its final speech, one can better understand how Synge adapts a common trope through a creative use of dramatic irony, foreshadowing, and particular language choices, and furthermore, how this adaptation transforms the familiar story of a woman mourning for her dead into a much more complex tale of the peace that can actually come from loss.

Almost immediately the play piques the audience's interest, because it opens with two sisters, Cathleen and Nora, talking ominously about something. Soon it becomes clear that they think their brother, Michael, has drowned, and what is most remarkable about the realization is the relative ease with which they meet it. Nora is fairly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, saying that they took the clothes off of a drowned man so that they could check his identity, and Cathleen is equally calm; while she stops her spinning, her first thought is simply a matter of logistics, wondering how her brother's body could have made it that far north (Synge, 1911, p.18). Their demeanor says far more than their words, because it reveals to the audience that death at sea is not a surprising phenomenon, and in fact, almost might be expected. Their only real concern is for their mother, Maurya, and their still-living brother, Bartley.

Bartley's fate is foreshadowed almost as quickly as the audience learns of Michael's, because just after they talk about how it could be possible for Michael to have floated so far north, the door blows open from a gust of wind and Cathleen asks if the priest convinced Bartley not to travel that day (Synge, 1911, p. 19). Although Michael's death is not verified until much later, and Bartley does not die until very near the end of the story, in the first few lines of dialogue that play makes it clear that the sea has complete control over these people's lives. This sense is compounded by the frequent discussions of what the sea is doing, almost as if it were a capricious god, granting life or death as easily and arbitrarily as a change in the weather. Of course, this characterization of the sea is not uncommon, and in fact the sea as a "cruel mistress" who lures men away from their families is an integral part of the trope Synge is playing off of. What is unique, however, is how far Synge carries this notion, because by highlighting the sea's control over all of their lives (and even their language), he is able to suggest a potential escape from this control, even if it comes at a steep price.

Maurya is as cognizant of the sea's control as anyone else, and perhaps more so, because even before Michael's death is confirmed, after Bartley leaves to sail away to sell some horses she exclaims "He's gone now, and when the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world" (Synge, 1911, p. 26). By the end of the play, her fears are confirmed, but her response is not what one might expect. After she thinks she has seen Michael's ghost, but before she finds out about Bartley's death, Maurya seems resentful of the sea, as she recalls all of the people she has lost to it and falls into a kind of reverie. From this the audience is led to believe that Bartley's end will be her own, because she seems so frail and powerless in the face of the sea's power.

However, once the truth is confirmed, Maurya (and thus Synge) subverts the audience's expectations, because Maurya's mourning gives way to a kind of peace. Immediately after learning of Bartley's death, Maurya realizes her newfound freedom, saying "they're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me" (Synge, 1911, p. 42). She repeats the language of the sea and weather that has permeated the play, but this time, instead of speaking of the wind and surf in awed, frightful tones, she remarks that she will no longer have to care about any of it; the sea's terrible power of her life ends with Bartley's death, and so although she has lost so many people, she is granted a kind of peace and freedom in her old age (Synge, 1911, p. 42). Her final lines echo this contentment, because after she comments upon Michael's "clean burial" in the sea and Bartley's "fine coffin," she asks "what more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied" (Synge, 1911, p. 45). Thus, over the course of the play, Maurya transforms from the standard trope of the widow to the sea to a kind of liberated woman, come to terms with life and death.