Riders to the Sea
John Millington Synge's poetic drama and one-act play Riders to the Sea is an understated look at a family's relationship with the sea, at a time when it provided both the sustenance and eventual death for a substantial number of men. The play uses the familiar trope of the wife and mother worried about her male family members dying at sea, but it complicates this trope by examining what happens when the ambivalent connection between a woman and the sea is finally broken. By examining the first scene of the play alongside its final speech, one can better understand how Synge adapts a common trope through a creative use of dramatic irony, foreshadowing, and particular language choices, and furthermore, how this adaptation transforms the familiar story of a woman mourning for her dead into a much more complex tale of the peace that can actually come from loss.
Almost immediately the play piques the audience's interest, because it opens with two sisters, Cathleen and Nora, talking ominously about something. Soon it becomes clear that they think their brother, Michael, has drowned, and what is most remarkable about the realization is the relative ease with which they meet it. Nora is fairly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, saying that they took the clothes off of a drowned man so that they could check his identity, and Cathleen is equally calm; while she stops her spinning, her first thought is simply a matter of logistics, wondering how her brother's body could have made it that far north (Synge, 1911, p.18). Their demeanor says far more than...
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now