Synge's 'Riders to the Sea' as a tragedy | Maurya as a tragic protagonist

-:Analysis of Riders to the Sea as a tragedy and Maurya's tragic fate:-

The image is taken from Google Map

Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of world, one man's experience,... [it] describe[s] the relation of the soul and the heart of the facts of life

— W. B. Yeats

The authenticity of Yeats'  remark can be evaluated when we try to discover the thoughts of tragedy. Synge's personal experience of Aran island is imbibed in his tragedy, Riders to the Sea to delineate the fatalistic circumstances under which the Irish man leads his life. Notwithstanding its limited scope, Riders to the Sea achieves its classical spirit because of the setting of human characters against Nature's stern power, and because of the language based on a rich still imaginatively vital peasant speech, has the strength to soar harmonizing with the emotions evoked. The setting here is the craggy and scape of the Aran Islands (a group of three islands located at the mouth of Galway Bay, on the west coast of Ireland, largest is  Inishmore, second largest is Inishmaan and the smallest is Inisheer), exposed to and battered by the sea, gloomy weather hanging like a pall on the poverty-stricken household. It is evident that Riders to the Sea is an excellent example of modern one-act tragedy in classical settings and with classical overtones like what we find Greek tragedies.

Jesus Christ

          Maurya, the tragic protagonist has lost all the male members of her family to the sea— they are the 'riders' who venture out to master their obscure fates, an art that paradoxically precipitates their 'hamartia'. It's a fact that Maurya is aware of and hence her fear and anxiety of a complete destruction, a note on which the play begins. Bartley, her last surviving son, prepares to leave for Galway Fair under the looming premonition of the death of his brother Michael who has not returned from the sea for nine days. Cathleen and Nora, the two choric characters communicate this sense of tragedy which they hope to dispel in their futile response to the young priest who has assured:

but let you not be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers half through the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her destitute.

          However, from the very beginning, the mood is one of the helplessness, the final surrender to the 'Immanent will'. The language is punctuated by death as the two sisters contemplate over the identity of a 'bundle of shirt and plain stocking' that were 'got off a drowned man in Donegal'.  The overpowering force of the 'gust of wind' that throws open the half-closed door, reminds Cathleen of Bartley's intent to cross the sea, one that Maurya passionately tries to prevent. It is the compulsion of his situation, even knowing 'the wind is rising the sea and the star is up against the moon.'

The hopeless mother

          From here on, as Maurya's impending loss of motherhood becomes more clear to us, the tragic atmosphere gets more intense, the symbols and imagery securing a more complex pattern. The Celtic ominosity is wrung out by the references to the 'pig with black feet' or the 'black nights' that will engulf Maurya's existence. We know for certain that Bertley will never come back. The inevitability is confirmed when he leaves without Maurya's blessing, she herself uttering in tragic irony, her own tragedy:

He is gone now, God spare us, and we will not see him again.

The climax and the catastrophe in the play rest on Maurya's spectral vision, comparable in its trepidation to the "fearfullest" pagan symbol of:

[the] day Bride Dara seen the dead man with the child in his arms.

The vision of Michael in fine clothes riding a grey pony following Bartley on his red mare gives Maurya the final confirmation that her motherhood is lost after all:

They are all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me

          The grief that she has suffered would now make her internalize the sea, as she can now recognize the sea within. For Maurya, the fear of the sea has perished, as she stands victorious in preparing herself for an understanding of the principles of mortality:

No man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied.

Internal sea of grief in Maurya

She gradually embraces her grief of not having a single man left in her family. At the same time, she dismisses the dominating power of the sea and tries to retrieve her mental strength to live the rest of her life with her two daughters.

          The uniqueness of the appeal of Riders to the Sea lies in the delineation of a tragic view of a 'Genuine Tragedy', where the Olympian standpoint of the spectacle of a man is gradually and thoroughly degenerated in it, as Hegel explains:

Powers, both equally moral and justifiable... come into collision... both suffers loss.

In the conflict between  Maurya and the sea, while Maurya's motherhood perishes, the identity of the sea as the object of fear perishes as well. The universality is retained in this untrammelled individuality that renders the tragedy into a wide arena of life, beyond the stage, beyond Maurya, beyond the riders.