Riders to the Sea:

J.M.Synge as a dramatist:

Synge was born in Dublin in 1871 and educated at Trinity College. Afterwards, he
wandered through France, Germany and Italy, devoting
himself to music and literature. Yeats found him living in a poor quarter
of Paris and persuaded him that he needed to go back to Ireland for
inspiration. Synge stayed for long periods in the Aran Islands off the western
coast and lived elsewhere as a peasant among peasants absorbing their
stories, their attitude to life and their colourful language. These are the people
whom we see in his plays.

Synge believes that drama should not be didactic and should not try to
teach or prove anything. He also believes that one of the things that nourishes
imagination is humour.

Synge maintains that the imagination and the language of the Irish people
are rich and if the writer makes use of them, he will be rich and will be able
to give the reality which is the root of all poetry in a comprehensive and
natural form.

Synge’s language is based on recorded Irish country speech. It is a rich

language. But it is not the quality of richness that matters, it is the relation
of the language to the action. Freyer has pointed out that the dominant
characteristic of Synge’s language is an abundance of simile and a complete
absence of metaphor. Synge's similes give flavour to speeches which might
otherwise be joyless.

Synge believes that on the stage, we must have reality and joy. Synge’s plays
owe much of their energy to the life of the Aran Islands and of the farmers:
a life that had not only simplicity and passion, but emotional richness and
humour. In Synge’s plays, the natural world is present to the imagination at
every moment. It is the wildness, not the beauty of nature that he admires.

Synge believes that modern literature has moved away from the common
interests of life. So he brings us back to these interests. Physical action in his
plays is energetic and this delight in the body is strengthened at every moment by
the dialogue.
A character is commonly defined by intelligence, profession and habits, but
in Synge there is almost nothing of this. Since his concern is the whole person(
including the body), his conception of character is dynamic. Like
every dramatist he gives his characters strength by opposing one to another.
His characters are defined by their emotional life.

The Main Theme of“ Riders to the Sea:”

The main theme of“ Riders to the Sea” is the conflict between man and the sea
and the inevitability of man’s defeat. Man is helpless in front of unseen forces
symbolized by the sea. Man has no free will, he cannot change his fate. He cannot
fight it either. He has to accept his fate as it is. This spirit
of resignation is obvious in Maurya’s famous speech when the last of her sons has
been drowned,“ they ’re all gone now and there isn’t anything more
the sea can do to me”, and also in her words,“ No man at all can be living
for ever and we must be satisfied.”

“Riders to the Sea ”shows how men should conduct themselves in the face
of fate. If the essence of drama is conflict, then the main character is the
sea , the instrument of Fate. The Aran Islanders know that men who ride
to the sea must expect hardship and early death, but they meet both with
complete resignation.

There are several references to other men who have been lost at sea.
This shows that young men are taken in turn by the sea. Bartley goes off
in Michael’s shirt and at the end he will be buried in the boards bought
for Michael.

Maurya’s narration of her tragedy reflects a whole life time of suffering

and conflict. Eight men move vividly across her imagination and ours,
all riders to the sea, which is death,“ I’ve had a husband and a husband’s
father and six sons in this house…six fine men…but they’re all gone now”.
She describes how they brought the body of her son patch when Bartley was
only a baby. Her life has been made up of nothing but such scenes.
She asks,“ Is it Patch or Michael ?” for her, the sea is associated with death and
dead men. When the Islanders bring the body of Bartley, Nora cries.
This implies that she is in the same position as her mother was many years
ago and in the future she will be in the position of Maurya , seeing her children
brought home in this way. It is always the same in past, present and future. Men
ride down to the sea and are brought home in this way.
Nothing can break the cycle of“these dying generations”. Maurya feels that
the sea is too powerful for anyone to resist. Finally she has reached a condition of
complete simplicity and has acquired a new concern for others,
“They’re all together this time. The end is come. May the Almighty God have
mercy on Bartley’s soul and on Michael’s… on the soul of everyone left
living in this world”.

Maurya:
W. B. Yeats says that Maurya, the old woman in Synge’s “Riders to the
Sea”,
in mourning for her six sons, mourns for the passing of all beauty and strength.
Maurya is both mainly an individual, a mother living in a particular
place at a particular time and also representative of the lasting characteristics
of her kind. She is also something else. She is an image of humanity facing
a hostile universe and through her, Synge hints as he does in other ways, that life is
essentially tragic and that the final reality is death. We have to accept this fact so
that we may find charity and peace.