Reading responses to a poem

Difficulty of Life Explored in Synge's Riders To The Sea

The difficulty of human experience is often overlooked in today's Hollywood culture. Even I the movies, we escape reality to watch unrealistic movies about love, success and life in general. Every so often, society needs to be reminded about the harshness of life. Riders to the Sea by John Synge is a play that jolts audiences back into reality by focusing on death and mankind's inability to control the elements around him. The blackness of death and the recklessness of fate are themes that make the play naturalist in its approach.

Death is a major theme in the play because it surrounds Nora. The play is short and Mora's focus never changes. She realizes the sea has consumed all of the men in her life and it is sure to take Bartley as well. Death is so powerful, it ruins the existence of this family. There is no joy and there is no hope. The men are fishermen by trade and danger awaits theme as they take to the sea. This aspect of the play highlights the conflict between man and nature. The action of the play indicates man cannot win when he is pitted against nature. Man cannot fight death and, in the end, we see how Nora and Maurya must comes to terms with it and we see how she does this with her words at the end of the play. When she says, "There isn't anything more the sea can do to me" (280), we understand her sense of loss and her hopelessness against the forces of nature. She resigns herself to this fate with this statement and, somehow, she finds peace in it. In Nora's case, there is nothing more to fear because the sea has done all it could to bring her misery.

Another theme in the play is fate. From the beginning of the play until the end, Nora and her family are victims of fate. They are stuck in a rut and the sea, their enemy, is personified through their suffering. Fate insists that fighting against the sea is futile. Nora knows this and she tries to convince Bartley before the sea takes his life. From this perspective, we see how mankind has no control over his destiny; he lives at the mercy of the universe.

The theme of death and the failure to overcome fate establish this play as one with a naturalist perspective. The characters in this play cannot overcome the elements of their environment. In fact, each one is picked off in a similar fashion and regardless of how these men think they can outsmart the sea, they fail. Bartley is hopeful when tells his mother and sister, "I'll ride down on the red mare, and the gray pony'll run behind me" (90) but his hope is quickly quashed as soon as he walks out the door. Nora knows this as she says, "When the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world" (90). These people are helpless to the hand life deals them.