Riders to the Sea

Riders to the Sea by J.M Synge is a tragic play regarding the sacrifice of one family to
an invisible character on an island west of Ireland. The play begins in a cottage where two sisters
are trying 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.

The sisters have no wish to sadden their mother further and so they decide to hide the
bundle. 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 Mauryas worries about her son Bartley.
She fears that he, too, will be lost in the sea, just as his five brothers. 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.

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 familys 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 to some white boards to make a coffin for Michael whenever his body is recovered
from the sea.

Maurya tries to warn him of the dangers, but he insists that he must go. He will take the
familys red mare, with the gray pony tied behind. After announcing his plans, he asks his
mother for a blessing, but Maurya refuses to give it. 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 blessing. Maurya 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. They discover that the stockings belong 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 Michaels clothes and assure her of the clean burial he
has had in the sea.Saddened, Maurya then tells the girls that she saw Bartley also.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.

The white boards that had been bought for Michaels coffin, is now used to make
Bartleys. Maurya, having lost six sons to the seatriumphantly announces, Theres no more
the sea can do to me. . . its a great rest Ill have now. The play ends, having recounted the
hardships of an Irish familyhardships brought on by economic destitution.
Characters

Maurya

Maurya (MOY-ruh), an old peasant woman living on one of the Aran Islands at the mouth of
Galway Bay on the western coast of Ireland, a wild, desolate, impoverished area. She has reared
six sons, four of whom are known to be dead, as are her husband and her husbands fatherall
from the ravages of the sea, whose fierce tides and winds make life difficult and dangerous. She
is afraid that Michael, the next from youngest son, who has been absent unexpectedly for some
time, is drowned also, and she tries to dissuade her last son, Bartley, from crossing over the
tumultuous sea to sell two horses at the fair on the mainland. Twice unable to give him a
journeys blessing, she has a vision foretelling his death. When her two daughters, after
identifying as Michaels some clothes found on a drowned body, inform her of Michaels death,
she recites the list of the others deaths and the circumstances. As she is being persuaded that he
is dead, villagers enter to announce the death of her last son, Bartley, who was knocked into the
sea by his pony. Instead of becoming bitter and angry, Maurya recognizes that the sea can do no
more to harm her, because she has lost all her men. There is an end to anxiety and a beginning of
peace for her, though there will be little to eat. She realizes that she will not long survive these
deaths. Mauryas 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 Gods mercy on the
souls of her men, on her own, and, generously, on the souls of everyone left living in the world.

Bartley

Bartley, the youngest of six sons, now the sole support of the household. He earns income by
riding horses into the sea to the steamer anchored far offshore, so that they can be sold at the
mainland fair. Preoccupied with practical exigencies, he ignores his mothers request that he not
go to sea, being the last surviving male of the family. He nevertheless asks Gods blessing on the
family and rides off on the red mare, leading the pony. His mother foretells his death and omits
the giving of a blessing to him, an omission considered bad luck. When his mother subsequently
stands on the path trying in vain to say the blessing, he gives her his blessing.

Cathleen

Cathleen, a daughter about twenty years old. As the older of two sisters, she takes the lead in
expressing concern and making arrangements. She sympathizes with her brothers need to go to
sea and criticizes her mother for repeatedly trying to stop him and for not giving him a blessing.
She sends Maurya with some bread to give him. Cathleen is effective in dealing with practical
details, as when she identifies some clothes as belonging to her other brother, Michael, drowned
nine days earlier. Cathleen is matter-of-fact and impatient with her mothers lamentations and
visions, telling Maurya of the evidence of Michaels death. Filled with life herself, she sees her
mother as old, broken, and lamenting excessively. Cathleen stands in sharp contrast to her
mothers deep, powerful, and mature emotions.

Nora
Nora, a young girl, another of Mauryas daughters. Her main function in the play is to talk with
Cathleen and enable the exposition of background and commentary on the action. She speaks
more respectfully to her mother than does Cathleen and with pity about her dead brother.