John Millington Synge’s ‘Riders to the Sea’ is one of the most perfect one-act plays in which all the characters are puppets of fate. Synge, suggested by WB Yeats, spends four years on the “Isla de Aran” and closely observes how destiny plays an important role in the life of the islanders and portrays it with great sincerity in his great work. Now let’s discuss it in detail.
In this work, the tragedy reaches the characters without any hamartia or tragic flaw. Here we see that the characters are not the least responsible for their downfall or death, unlike in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Here fate or luck controls everything. None can avoid it. Here life means nothing more than tragedy and unconditional surrender to the mysterious destiny.
We see that the inhabitants of the “Isla de Arán” constantly fight against the sea in order 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 watery grave from generation to generation.
Here, the super powerful destiny of the islander is represented by the sea, which is both the giver and the taker for them. So there is no way they can 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 hope to recover the body and receive it. As she says;
“…if Michael gets washed, tomorrow morning, or the morning after, or any morning in the week he, for the grace of god.”
He is not at all responsible for her death, because he accidentally drowned in the sea maybe because of a storm at sea.
Now Bartley, the only living child in the family, knows all about the fate of the other members of the family. He is also informed of the danger of going to sea in low weather. However, he decides to go to the mainland to sell a couple 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 her today or tomorrow he must have been forced to go to sea. Thus we see that, without any hamartia, tragedy strikes if Bartley’s life. Therefore, this is the tragedy of his fate.
The silent surrender of the islander to his fate is clear in Maurya’s speech.
“In the big world, the old people leave things for their children and children, but in this place it is the young who leave things for those who are old.”
We see, in this play, a storm of suffering and tragedy has overtaken Madurya, but she shows her calm and resilience. As she says:
“I have had a husband, a father of a husband, and six sons in this house, six good men, although it was a difficult birth I had with each of them… There was Stephen and Shawn lost in the great wind, and there is often in the bay of Gregorio de Boca Dorada…”
Madurya has experienced that; nobody can fight against destiny. Then she grants the power of destiny and submits to destiny saying:
“What more can we want than that? No man at all can live forever, and we must be satisfied.”
It is noteworthy that, here a question can be raised that, “why shouldn’t the islanders leave the island to escape death?” In reality, they love the land of their mother and ancestors so much that they would rather die than leave the island.
Finally we can say that ‘Riders to the Sea’ is a unique creation of Synge and a great example of fatal game. It is completely different from any other great tragedy by Shakespeare or Sophocles. In this work all the characters are victims of cruel fate.