Riders to the Sea Summary

The play, set on an island off the coast of Ireland, begins with Nora bringing in a
small bundle with her and telling Cathleen that these may be the clothes of their
brother Michael. The young priest told her a body of a drowned man was found
at Donegal, and the body might be Michael's. The sisters are scared to open the
bundle of clothes because they do not want their mother, Maurya, to know:
Michael has been missing for a week and the family had already lost five men to
the sea. They hide the bundle in the turf loft of the cottage.
Maurya is prepared for the funeral for Michael, with whiteboards for his coffin
ready at the cottage. She enters the kitchen; she is a woman who is seen
lamenting all the time and worrying that her sons will never come back from the
sea. Maurya, Nora, and Cathleen discuss the last son, Bartley, who is also
planning to go the sea to sell the family horses so they could get some money.
Nora and Cathleen are convinced that Bartley should go to the fair at Galway to
sell the animals, while Maurya is still hoping that the Priest will not allow him to
go in such dangerous tides.
Bartley enters the cottage looking for a new piece of rope. Maurya tries to stop
him, but he says he wants to make a halter for the horses; clearly Bartley plans to
go to the sea. Maurya again tries to dissuade him by showing him the
whiteboards for Michael. Paying no heed, Bartley changes his clothes, asks his
sisters to take care of the sheep, and leaves without receiving any blessings from
his mother. It is a tradition in Ireland that the son receives the blessings of his
mother before going anywhere, but Maurya breaks this fashion.
Bartley leaves with a red mare and a grey pony tied behind. Cathleen then
notices that he has not taken any food and tells Maurya to walk down to the well
to give Bartley his food and the blessings. Maurya leaves using a stick that
Michael brought, lamenting over how in her family, the old ones never leave
anything behind for their heirs, despite that being the general custom.
Once Maurya is gone, the girls retrieve the bundle of clothes from the loft to
check if they are Michael's. Nora realizes that the stockings are truly Michael's,
because she recognizes her own stitching on them. They count the number of
stitches and arrive at the conclusion that Michael was dead and buried.
The sisters hide the clothes again because they think that Maurya will be
returning in a good mood since she got the chance to bless Bartley; however,
Maurya comes back more distressed than ever. She tells her daughters that she
saw Michael on the grey pony; she could not bless Bartley due to the shock. To
calm her down, Nora and Cathleen show Maurya the clothes and tell her that
Michael has had a clean burial. Maurya's laments are interrupted when islanders
bring the body of Bartley into the cottage and tell the women that the grey pony
knocked Bartley into the sea, where he drowned.
Maurya gets on her knees near Bartley's body and sprinkles holy water on him.
She finally resigns herself to her fate as she claims that she will finally sleep at
night because she no longer has anyone to worry about: all the men of her family
have died to the sea. The whiteboards that were supposed to be used for
Michael's coffin will now be used to bury Bartley. Maurya prays that the souls of
her husband, her husband's father, and four sons may rest in peace, and the
curtains are drawn.
 Riders to the Sea Character List

Maurya

Maurya has given birth to six sons during her life on the coastal island lying of at
the mouth of Ireland's Galway Bay. Four of them are already dead, along with
their father and grandfather. She is old and poor and fears that the extended and
uncharacteristic absence of her son Michael means he is about to added to the
list of her deceased loved ones. As if worrying that Michael has drowned weren't
enough stress, she also doesnt appear to be very successful at persuading her
other remaining son, Bartley, from crossing over to the mainland in a bid to deal
away a couple of horses. In the end, Maurya has only her daughters to help with
the cold comfort of knowing that there are no more men in her life for the sea to
take from her. She feels at last a sense of peace and serenity now that her
greatest anxiety has been lifted.

Bartley

Bartley is the youngest of Mauryas six sons; when Michaels death is confirmed,
he steps up to become the family's sole financial support. His means of
supporting the family is what gives the play its title: he rides horses out to sea
and to the steamer ship, which must lay anchored far offshore; the horses are
sold at a fair on the mainland. Maurya refuses to give Bartley her blessing after
having a vision of his impending death.

Cathleen

Cathleen is the eldest of Mauryas daughter. Cathleen is 20 years old; she

commiserates with Bartleys position and is scornful of her mothers
superstitions. In contrast to the somewhat mystical bent of her mother, who is
given to lamentations and omens, Cathleen is pure practicality in action, which is
a great necessity when living with someone like Maurya.

Nora

The youngest member of the clan, Nora is much more patient with mothers
penchant for self-pity than her oldest sister is. At the same time, she provides a
great sounding board for Cathleen to express her contrarian views.

The Priest

The priest is never actually seen on stage, but his presence is so vital to the story
that he must be considered at least as important a character as Nora. It is the
priest who delivers the message through Nora that Maurya must put her faith
and trust in a God that would never allow every last one of her sons to die while
she is still alive. He is younger and more modern than Maurya.
 Riders to the Sea Themes

The Power of the Sea

The power of the sea the central theme of the text. The Sea is right outside the
cottage door, volatile, unpredictable, and implacable. It has taken almost all
of Maurya's male family members and is poised to take the rest of them as well. It
defies rationality and even God; the Holy Water is a pitiful reflection of it.
Difference characters relate to the sea in different ways. For Nora and Cathleen,
the sea only matters in terms of losing family members; for Maurya, it is the
great enemy; for the young priest, it is of little importance; for Bartley, it is
dangerous but is a way of life. The potency of the sea in this play is Synge's
meditation on the power of nature and of suffering.

Catholicism vs. Paganism

The play is steeped in traditional Irish Catholicism: there are priests, blessings,
Holy Water, etc. However, traditional Catholicism rests, somewhat uneasily,
side-by-side with more pagan religious elements. Maurya doesn't heed the
priest's empty, naive platitudes so much as she looks to the stars and other
natural phenomena for warnings and signs. She knows more about the island
than he does; she is skeptical of his outsider status and he is never even seen
within the boundaries of the cottage. She heeds the power of the sea much more
than she heeds God. It is only at the end of the text when her battle with the sea
is over that she can peacefully submerge herself back into the rituals and rites of
her Catholic faith.

Tradition vs. Modernity

Maurya represents tradition; her children and the young priest, on the other
hand, represent modernity. Maurya knows everything about the island and its
particulars; her religion is more paganistic than Catholic, her views stubbornly
held. She does not embrace new ideas of comforting Catholicism or commerce.
She only knows her small life, which is clear when she is wary to even leave her
cottage.
Maurya's children, in contrast, deride her "senseless" behavior and rigid
adherence to her beliefs. They look beyond the island to the wider world; the
young priest is the connection between these two spaces. The tensions between
the two worlds most impact Bartley, who understands the sea is dangerous but
feels its pull because he is a man and must secure a livelihood for his family. At
the end of the play it is clear modernity will ultimately dominate, but it is also
clear that Maurya's worldview is still important and has much to teach the
younger generation.

Gender Roles

The characters in the text rigidly adhere to the prescribed gender roles of their
time and place. Nora is relatively voiceless, while Cathleen is the keeper of the
hearth. Maurya is the quintessential Mother, caring only for her family and the
extension of its lineage: she worries, chastises, and mourns; her sons are her
main focus. She is not at all comforted by the fact that her daughters remain
living; they are essentially useless in terms of what they can bring to the family.
As the man of the family at the opening of the play, Bartley's role is clear: to
provide for his family. Cathleen articulates that "it is the life of a young man to be
going on the sea" . He is the provider and Maurya's fears that he will die are also
related to the problems they will face: "It's hard set we'll be surely the day you're
drownd'd with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I an old
woman looking for the grave?"

Analysis

Riders to the Sea is short, has very little plot, and has next-to no character
development; despite these characteristics (or perhaps due to them?), it is a
potent and absorbing work that is a hallmark of the Irish Literary Renaissance
and one of Synges most important contributions to drama written in the English
language. The brief work features capacious, resounding themes of humanity vs.
nature, traditional religion vs. modernity, the community vs. the individual, and
the particular vs. the universal.

As part of the Irish Literary Renaissance (see the Other section of this study
guide), the play recreated the spirit of the Irish language in English through using
Gaelic speech patterns. It also celebrates the dignity and stoicism of the people of
the Aran Islands: this depiction is intended to ameliorate contemporary criticism
of these people as backward and primitive. Indeed, while the poverty in which
Maurya and her family live, together with the fact that the island seems
extremely far removed from the mainlands industrialization and modernization,
suggests that they are lagging behind, the universality of their sentiments and
suffering elevate their archaic existence to one that is much more resonant and
impactful.

That suffering and sorrow are what lend themselves to the plays categorization
as a tragedy, though it lacks some of the essential hallmarks of that genre. Ruth
Fleischmann writes, Many elements of the play remind one of the classical
tragedies of antiquity: the compelling structure, the foreshadowing of the
tragedy and its inevitability, the element of guilt which is not personal guilt, the
stoic acceptance of fate, the great simplicity and dignity of the main character.
The characters do not possess any flaws (e.g., pride, anger, lust) that bring about
tragedy, however: the tragedy lies in the implacable, insurmountable power of
the sea and of fate.

The seas adversary, Maurya, is not a nuanced or well developed character:

instead she is the archetypal suffering mother, an exemplar of the Virgin Mary in
the Pieta, that iconic Christian image of maternal suffering. She has lost her
father-in-law, husband, and four sons to the sea thus far. At the opening of the
play she is sure that her son Michael is gone as well, and is fearful that her
youngest, Bartley, will be next. She sees herself at constant war with the sea, and
with this body count it is no wonder. As critic Denis Donoghue writes, to Maurya
the Sea is the Enemy, the destructive principle, destroyer of human and family
continuity. She feels its powers deep within her bones and her childrens
scoffing and protestations can do nothing to mitigate it. And, of course, Mauryas
awe of the sea proves to be right," for she does indeed lose her remaining son.
The sea has emerged victorious in this cruel game and it is only after it officially
does so that Maurya can find peace in the acceptance of her profound losses.
While her words of its a great rest Ill have now, and its time surely. Its a great
rest Ill have now, and great sleeping in the long nights after Samhein may seem
perplexing or even callous, in fact they make a great deal of sense given the
cessation of this lifelong struggle.

The perplexity at Mauryas behavior and beliefs is most clearly observed in her
children. Nora, Cathleen, and Bartley are openly skeptical, and sometimes quite
derisive, of their mother. This is due to the fact that, as critic Judith Remy Leder
notes, the play can be read as is more than just a work about noble primitives: It
is an account of a cultural battle[and we should view] the play as a
psychologically accurate representation of turn-of-the-century Irish peasants,
rather than as an idyllic, romanticized picture of them. Maurya is on one side of
encroaching modernity and her children on the other. Maurya believes in signs
and omens. Her world is small and circumscribed, hence her reluctance to even
leave the cottage to go down to Bartley. Leder notes that Maurya even uses
rhetoric characteristic of the oral traditionher language is not easily dismissed.
It is hard and dark and, as Maurya hints, should have the power to hold. She
finds meaning in every small thing, as when she is handed Michaels walking
stick and 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 . She also, of course, has a vision of her
dead son Michael and is convinced that Bartley is going to die as well; this
certainty is why she avoids giving her son the traditional Irish blessing.
By contrast, the children inhabit a more modern world (or at least they are
trying to). They do not believe in signs or omens and refuse to orient their life
around the mysteries and vagaries of the sea. Nora is content to merely parrot
the young priests words, and seems interested in the wider world. She does not
know much about island traditions and is generally aloof. Cathleen might be
slightly more traditional (she is the keeper of the hearth and is more like her
mother) but she too questions Mauryas blessing, supports Bartleys choice to
sell the horses, and is frustrated with the tensions tradition creates with
modernity. Bartley is not as outwardly disrespectful of his mother, but he is very
much a transitional figure. He firmly belongs to the island, but he does not have
his mothers fear of the sea. The sea is his livelihood, and as a modern man he
thinks he can control it. He is obsessed with time and action while the island
seems to exist outside of time. As Leder points out, he only has eight lines in the
play and four mention the word going," which demonstrates that he is always
looking outward and desiring action. Finally, what makes him a transitional (and
tragic) character is that he partly does hold onto tradition (as seen in his
utterance of the blessing) while at the same time as he throws his hat into the
young priests ring.
This young priest is one of the more fascinating elements of the play even though
he is never seen onstage. He is a figure constructed from the words of the other
characters, and their relative position in regards to tradition vs. morality
determines how they feel about him. The children seem to take comfort in the
mans easy and confident opinion that God would never leave Maurya without
any sons. He is everything that Maurya is not: young, an outlander, comfortable,
confident, and modern. He is becoming an authority figure on the island to the
extent that the clothes from the drowned man are given to him; Leder calls him a
mediator between the island and the mainland. His Catholicism stands in
contrast to the pagan spirituality of Maurya and islanders like her, but he is the
interloper and is defied at the end of the play when the sea takes Bartley.
The young priest is a representative of the orthodox Catholicism that the island
denizens adhere to, but this orthodoxy is constantly undermined by the power of
the sea. Throughout the play Maurya in particular flirts with paganism, referring
to signs and symbols and eschewing the priests optimistic statement that God
would never allow her to lose all her sons. Critic Denis Donoghue writes, the
thematic situation of the play derives from the inhuman power of the Sea, and
Synge has placed before the eyes of his audience a representation of sea-death in
the white boards standing by the wall of the cottage. The reminder of the seas
potency is thus ever-present, but Catholicism is as well. The focus on nails at the
end is a reminder of Jesuss sacrifice on the cross. Donoghue believes that at the
end of the play Maurya moves more into a Christian realm through her
acceptance of the events of her life. The emphasis is on the prayer, the Holy
Water, the burial, and the afterlife. She truly is the image of the Virgin Mary.