‘Riders to the Sea’ as a fatal work
Gaming‘Riders to the Sea’, by John Millington Synge, is one of the most perfect one-act plays where all the characters are the puppets of destiny. Synge, suggested by WB Yeats, stays four years on the “Isle of Aran” and observes very closely how fate plays an important role in the life of the islanders and portrays very sincerely in his great work. Now we are going to discuss it in detail.
In this play, tragedy reaches the characters without hamartia or tragic flaw. Here we see, the characters are not the least responsible for their fall or death unlike Shakespeare’s tragedy. Here destiny or destiny controls everything. No one can help it. Here life means nothing more than tragedy and unconditional surrender to the mysterious destiny.
We see that the inhabitants of the “Isle of Aran” constantly fight against the sea to sustain their daily bread, ignoring the possibility of death, because they have no other option but to avoid the sea. Thus they embrace the tomb of water from generation to generation.
Here, the super-powerful destiny of the islander is represented by the sea, which is both for them the giver and for them. So by no means can they ignore the call of the all-consuming deadly sea.
At the beginning of the play we see that Maurya’s four sons have already lost their lives at sea. Now the fifth, Michael has been missing for nine days and the relatives are waiting to retrieve the body from and receive it. As she says;
“… if Michael washes up, tomorrow morning, or the next morning, or any morning of the week, by the grace of God.”
He is not at all responsible for his death, because he accidentally drowned in the sea perhaps due to a storm at sea.
Now Bartley, the only living son of the family, knows all the fate of the other members of the family. He is also informed of the danger of going to sea in bad weather. However, he decides to go to the mainland to sell a pair of horses at the cattle fair.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with his decision, but “it is the life of a young man to go to sea”, as Cathleen puts it. Without it, today or tomorrow, he must have been forced to go to sea. Thus we see that, without hamartia, tragedy comes if the life of Bartley. Therefore, this is your tragedy of fate.
The silent surrender of the islander to his destiny is clear in Maurya’s speech.
“In the big world, the elderly leave things after them for their children and children, but this is the place where the young leave things for those who are old.”
We see, in this work, a storm of suffering and tragedy has blown over Madurya, but she shows her calm and resistance. As she says:
“I have had a husband and a father of a husband, and six children in this house, six good men, although it was a difficult birth that I had with each of them … Stephen and Shawn were lost in the great wind, and they often found in the bay of Gregorio de Boca dorada … “
Madurya has experienced that; no one can fight fate. Then she grants the power of destiny and submits to destiny saying:
“What more can we want than that? No man can live forever, and we must be satisfied.”
It is noteworthy that, here a question can be posed that “why were the islanders not going to leave the island to escape death”? In fact, they love their motherland and the land of their ancestors so much that they would rather die than leave the island.
Lastly, we can say that ‘Riders to the Sea’ is a unique Synge creation and a great example of fatal gameplay. It is completely unlike any other great tragedy by Shakespeare or Sophocles. In this work all the characters are victims of cruel fate.