Give a description on the role of the sea in J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea.
J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea is one of the greatest one-act tragedies in the history of English drama. In this play, the tragedy is brought by the “Inscrutable Fate”, a superior to human personality and this mysterious fate is the unrelenting, ever-cruel sea. The sea plays a very important part from the very beginning of the drama to its final catastrophe.
In this respect, “Riders to the Sea” is just like a great Greek tragedy in which Fate works irresistibly. No human power of whatever magnitude it may be, can resist this Fate. The Sea, the cruel Fate incarnate in the drama, can not be resisted in anyway.
Though Maurya is the central figure of Synge’s tragedy, the most mighty character in the drama is the Sea. The thought of the sea is never off from the minds of the dramatic persona. When the pay opens, we see that the Sea has already caused a great havoc in the family of Maurya. Its hunger is eternal, ever non-appeasing. It has already swallowed Maurya’s father-in-law, husband and five sons and yet it wants more and more. Only nine days back, Maurya’s fifth son, Michael went to the sea to catch fish. But he did not come back home.
So all the members of Maurya’s family and their neighbours were thinking whether the Sea had swallowed Michael and every day Maurya went to the sea-shore in expectation that the sea might wash up Michael’s body on the shore. But the waiting was in vain. The sea did not wash up the dead body of Michael.Â
Under such pathetic circumstances, Maurya’s last surviving son, Bartley was determined to go to the Galway Fair to sell horses by crossing the sea. Again, all the members of Maurya’s family became terribly afraid of the Sea and they thought no other thought but of the Sea. The thought of the ever-hungry Sea constantly haunted their minds. Cathleen enquired, “Is the Sea bad by the white rocks, Nora?” And Nora in reply said, “Middling bad, God help us. There’s a great roaring in the West, and it’s worse it will be getting when the tide is turned to the wind.”
The mother too, as soon as she learnt of Bartley’s determination to go to the Sea, in great fear she uttered, “He won’t go this day with the wind rising from the South and West.” Therefore, we see that the Sea was a nightmarish character to all the people of the Aran Island.
The sea is indeed, the most impressive character in the play. It is so intimately associated with the lives of the people of the Aran Island that they are bound to know it throughly. They all live in the open view of the sea and take care to know its ebb and flow, its behaviour in storm and calm weather and all that. They are familiar not only with her physical feature and its various moods but also with the image of the sea as a mighty demon that looms large in precipitating their fate.
It is true, the sea supplies them fish to live on and sea-weeds to cook etc. But it also devours the Male members of different families of the Island. The dramatist in the drama shows only the havoc caused by the Sea in Maurya’s family but we know that the same kind of havoc takes place in many other families of the Island. Hence, the ever-hungry, booming Sea is of utmost concern to the people of the Island.
The relentless Sea takes away even last surviving son, Bartley, of Maurya. As soon as Bartley leaves the threshold of the cottage for sailing over the sea, Maurya cries out bitterly, “He is gone now. God spare us and we will not see him again.” And what Maurya says here, comes out cruelly true too soon. The gray pony knocks Bartley down into the Sea and the hungry sea swallows him and ultimately casts him ashore.
Hence, when Bartley’s dead body is carried into Maurya’s house, she says, “They are all gone now and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me. I will have no call now to be crying and praying when the wind breaks from the South…” So long Maurya and all the members of her family passed their days and nights in great fear of the Sea but now the Sea has given them an eternal relief by swallowing up all the male members.
The Sea accentuates the intensity of tragic pathos and leaves an ineffaceable impression on all minds. It has reversed the ways of life and when Maurya says, “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.” And the Sea is the root of all evils bring about this place.
The Sea in the drama is, indeed, an uncontrollable ever mighty force to whom all human characters are, indeed, just like the pigmies. The conflict as depicted in the drama between the human beings and the Sea is an unequal conflict and in such a conflict, human beings are bound to submit to the Sea. That is why, when all the male members of Maurya’s family are devoured by the Sea, Maurya submits herself to Fate with calm resignation by saying, “No man at all can be living for ever and we must be satisfied.”
So, we see that the cruel Sea causes a havoc in Maurya’s family and not only this, it brings about tragedy in a greater or lesser degree in most of the families of the Island who go to the Sea.
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