John M. Synge

## Biography

Synge was educated privately at schools in **Dublin** and Bray, and later studied piano, flute, violin, music theory and counterpoint at the **Royal Irish Academy of Music**. He travelled to the continent to study music, but changed his mind and decided to **focus on literature**. He was a talented student and won a scholarship in counterpoint in 1891. The family moved to the suburb of Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) in 1888, and Synge entered Trinity College, Dublin, the following year. He graduated with a BA in 1892, having **studied Irish and Hebrew**, as well as continuing his music studies and playing with **the Academy Orchestra in the Antient Concert Rooms**. Between November 1889 and 1894 he took **private music lessons with Robert Prescott Stewart**.

Synge joined **the Dublin Naturalists' Field Club and read the works of Charles Darwin**. He wrote: "When I was about fourteen I obtained a book of Darwin's .... My studies showed me the force of what I read, [and] the more I put it from me the more it rushed back with new instances and power ... Soon afterwards I turned my attention to works of Christian evidence, reading them at first with pleasure, soon with doubt, and at last in some cases with derision." He then continued, "Soon after I had relinquished the kingdom of God I began to take up a real interest in the kingdom of Ireland. My politics went round ... to a temperate **Nationalism**."

Synge later developed **an interest in Irish antiquities and the Aran Islands**, and became a member of the Irish League for a year. He left the League because, as he told Maud Gonne, "my theory of regeneration for Ireland differs from yours ... **"I wish to work on my own for the cause of Ireland, and I shall never be able to do so if I get mixed up with a revolutionary and semi-military movement."** **In 1893 he published his first known work, a poem influenced by Wordsworth, Kottabos: A College Miscellany.**

After graduating, Synge decided that he wanted to be a professional musician and **went to Germany to study music**. He stayed in Coblenz during 1893 and moved to Würzburg in January 1894. Partly because he was shy about performing in public, and partly because of doubt about his ability, **he decided to abandon music and pursue his literary interests.** He **returned to Ireland in June 1894, and moved to Paris in January 1895 to study literature and languages at the Sorbonne.**

During summer holidays with his family in Dublin he met and fell in love with Cherrie Matheson, a friend of one of his cousins and a member of the Plymouth Brethren. He proposed to her in 1895 and again the next year, but she turned him down on both occasions because of their differing views on religion. This rejection affected Synge greatly and reinforced his determination to spend as much time as possible outside Ireland.

In **1896** Synge visited **Italy** to study the language for a time before returning to Paris. Later that year **he met** William Buttler Yeats**, who encouraged him to live for a while in the Aran Islands, and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work. That year he joined with Yeats, Augusta, Lady Gregory, and George William Russell to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which later established the Abbey Theatre.**

In 1897 Synge had his first attack of Hodgkin's disease and also had an enlarged gland removed from his neck. The following year he spent the summer in the Aran Islands. He spent the next **five summers in the Aran Islands, collecting stories and folklore, and perfecting his Irish, while continuing to live in Paris for most of the rest of each year.** He also visited Brittany regularly. **During this period, he wrote his first play, *When the Moon Has Set*** and sent it to Lady Gregory for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1900, but she rejected it. (The play was not published until it appeared in the Collected Works.)

Synge's first account of life in the Aran Islands was published in the New Ireland Review in 1898 and **his book, *The Aran Islands*, based largely on journals, was completed in 1901 and published in 1907** with illustrations by Jack Butler Yeats. **Synge considered the book his "first serious piece of work"**. When Lady Gregory read the manuscript she advised Synge to remove any direct naming of places and to add more folk stories, but he refused to do either because he wanted to create something more **realistic**. **The book expresses Synge's belief that beneath the Catholicism of the islanders it was possible to detect a substratum of the pagan beliefs of their ancestors. His experiences in the Aran Islands were to form the basis for the plays about Irish rural life that Synge went on to write.**

In **1903** Synge left Paris and **moved to London.** **He had written two one-act plays, *Riders to the Sea* and *The Shadow of the Glen***, the previous year. These met with Lady Gregory's approval and *The Shadow of the Glen* was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903. ***Riders to the Sea*** was performed at the same venue in February the following year. The Shadow of the Glen, under the title In the Shadow of the Glen, formed part of the bill for the opening run of the Abbey Theatre from 27 December 1904 to 3 January 1905. Both plays were **based on stories that Synge had collected in the Aran Islands, and Synge relied on props from the Aran Islands to help set the stage** for each of them. **He also relied on Hiberno-English, the English dialect of Ireland, to reinforce its usefulness as a literary language, partly because he believed that the Irish language could not survive.**

**Synge´s plays were attacked by nationalists**, who decried it **because of the author's attitude to God and religion**. Pearse, Arthur Griffith and other **conservative-minded Catholics claimed Synge had done a disservice to Irish nationalism by not idealising his characters**. When the Abbey Theatre was set up Synge was appointed literary adviser and soon became one of the directors, along with Yeats and Lady Gregory.

Synge **died at the Elpis Nursing Home in Dublin on 24 March 1909, aged 37**, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, Dublin. A collected volume, Poems and Translations, with a preface by Yeats, was published by the Cuala Press on 8 April 1909.

## Historical & Cultural Context

### British Control over Ireland

**English expansion into Ireland had begun in the 1100s**, when **the pope granted control of Ireland to the English king**. English knights invaded Ireland, and many settled there to form a new aristocracy. **The Irish, who had their own ancestry, culture, and language bitterly resented the English presence. Laws imposed by the English in the 1500s and 1600s limited the rights of Catholics and favored the Protestant religion and the English language.**

Over the years, **the British government** was determined to maintain its control over Ireland. It **formally joined Ireland to Britain in 1801**. Through a setback for Irish Nationalism, Ireland gained representation in the British Parliament. **Irish Leader Daniel O’Connel persuaded parliament to pass the Catholic emancipation act in 1829. This law restored many rigths to Catholics.**

### The Great Famine

In the **1840s**, Ireland experienced **one of the worst famines of modern history**. For many years, Irish peasants had depended on potatoes as virtually their sole source of food. **From 1845 to 1848, a plant of fungus ruined nearly all of Ireland’s potato crop**. Out of a population of 8 million, **about a million people died from starvation and disease over the next few years**.

During the famine years, about a million and a half **people fled from Ireland**. Most went to the United States; others went to Britain, Canada and Australia. At home, in Ireland, **the British government enforced the demands of the English landowners that the Irish peasants pay their rent. Many Irish lost their land and fell hopelessly in debt, while large landowners profited from higher food prices.**

### The Easter Rising

Frustrated over the delay in gaining independence, **a small group of Irish Nationalists rebelled in Dublin during Easter week, 1916**. **British troops put down the easter rising and executed its leaders**. Their fate, however, aroused wider **popular support for the nationalist movement**.

After WWI, the **Irish Nationalists** won a victory in the elections for the British Parliament. To protest delays in home rule, the nationalist members decided not to attend Parliament. Instead, they **formed an underground Irish government and declared themselves independent. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), an unofficial military force seeking independence for Ireland leaded by Sinn Fein**, staged a series of attacks against British officials in Ireland. The attacked **sparked war between the nationalists and the British government**.

### The War of Independence

On **January 19 of 1919**, Sinn Féin set up an independent Parliament for Ireland in Dublin, and started creating a functioning government. On the same day, **two members of the IRA shot two members of the British-friendly Royal Irish Constabulary**. This moment is traditionally seen as **the start of the Irish War of Independence**, although the Parliament did not officially declare war until April.

The IRA adopted a **guerrilla campaign** given their lack of men, training and arms. They were organised initially into numerous small, fragmented, fiercely independent units who, acting on their own initiative, launched frequent low-level surprise attacks.

At first, British response was actually pretty ineffective. Their troops in Ireland were almost entirely composed of Irish citizens, who joined the independence movement. **With the British army in Ireland so disabled, the government relied on divisions of Black and Tans, former soldiers who were little more than mercenaries**. In November of 1920, these auxiliary troops fired into a crowd of spectators at a sports rally, killing many and leading to a violent riot remembered as **Bloody Sunday**.

In **1921**, Sinn Féin won another decisive victory in the parliamentary elections, further increasing their power. **Britain dissolved Ireland's parliament, leading to a resurgence of violence** that they could not contain. With all of their options failing, **Britain was forced to negotiate with Sinn Féin over Irish independence**.

The Irish War of Independence culminated in the **Anglo-Irish Treaty**, signed in December **1921**. The treaty allowed most of Ireland to become a self-governing state, but still ultimately under the rule of the British monarchy. **This treaty created the Irish Free State, a self-governing British dominion. Northern Ireland was allowed to opt out of the Free State**, which it immediately did. **The treaty** caused a split in both Sinn Fein and the IRA and **led to the Irish Civil War (1922-23)**.

### Irish Civil War

In April 1922 anti-treaty members of the IRA occupied the Four Courts in Dublin. The provisional government (in the process of building the National Army) was largely dependent on the IRA for policing and was unable to deal effectively with the escalating violence. In the same month the Cabinet decided to provide the provisional government with military assistance.

On June 16 1922, Ireland went to polls. The pro-treaty representatives took 58 seats and the anti-treaty representatives took 35. However, shortly afterwards republicans killed the Ulster MP Sir Henry Wilson, a prominent opponent of an independent Ireland, and kidnapped a general of the Free State Army. Collins responded by attacking the republican-occupied courts in Dublin.

The civil war was waged between two opposing groups, Irish republicans (based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic) and Irish nationalists, over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The forces of the Provisional Government (which became the Free State in December 1922) supported the Treaty, while the Republican opposition saw it as a betrayal of the Irish Republic (which had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising)

The civil war progressed with increasing bitterness, but the anti-treaty faction did not have widespread support and the size of the National Army was increasing. The war ended in May 1923.

### The Irish Renaissance

The **flowering of Irish literary talent at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that was closely allied with a strong political nationalism and a revival of interest in Ireland’s Gaelic literary heritage**. The renaissance was inspired by the nationalistic pride of the Gaelic revival by the **retelling of ancient heroic legends in books** such as the *History of Ireland* (1880) by Standish O’Grady and *A Literary History of Ireland* (1899) by Douglas Hyde; and by **the Gaelic League**, which was formed in 1893 to **revive the Irish language and culture**. The early leaders of the renaissance wrote rich and passionate verse, filled with the grandeur of **Ireland’s past and the music and mysticism of Gaelic poetry**. They were mainly members of the privileged class and were adept at English verse forms and familiar with lyric poetry that **extolled (praised) the simple dignity of the Irish peasant and the natural beauty of Ireland**.

The movement developed into a vigorous literary force centred on the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats. Though he contributed to the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, the first Irish national theatre, he wrote only a few plays, which were beautiful but difficult to stage. His chief colleague was Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, who took a leading part in the Abbey’s management and wrote many plays. **The Irish Literary Theatre, established in 1898, also excelled in the production of peasant plays. The greatest dramatist of the movement was John Millington Synge, who wrote plays of great beauty and power in a stylized peasant dialect.**

## Bibliography

*In the Shadow of the Glen*, 1903

***Riders to the Sea***, **1904**

*The Well of the Saints*, 1905

*The Aran Islands*, 1907

*The Playboy of the Western World*, 1907

*The Tinker's Wedding*, 1908

*Poems and Translations*, 1909

*Deirdre of the Sorrows*, 1910

*In Wicklow and West Kerry*, 1912

*Collected Works of John Millington Synge* 4 vols, 1962–1968

* Volume 1 - Poems, 1962
* Volume 2 - Prose, 1966
* Volumes 3 and 4 - Plays, 1968

## *Riders to the Sea*

A one-act play **performed in 1904 in the Abbey Theatre**, the play is **set in the Aran Islands**, and like all of Synge's plays it is noted for **capturing the poetic dialogue of rural Ireland**. The very simple plot is based not on the traditional conflict of human wills but on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal but relentless cruelty of the sea.

While Synge was on Inishmaan, the story came to him of a man whose body had been washed up on the far away coast of Donegal, and who, by reason of certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island. In due course, he was recognised as a native of Inishmaan, in exactly the manner described in the play. It is the dramatist's high distinction that he has simply taken the materials which lay ready to his hand, with little modification, and created a tragedy which, for dramatic irony and noble pity, has no equal among its contemporaries.

### Genre

**A domestic tragedy**

Despite being a modern play, Riders to the Sea contains a number of classical elements. The play deals with some basic and fundamental points of **classical tragedies**. Firstly, the play very strictly maintains the **three unities of time, place and action**. Only what happen in one day are shown on the stage and the events that occurred earlier are reported on the stage—which is a basic requirement of ancient plays. The play opens and ends in the same place and events that occur or are done in distance are off-staged, and the play holds the thread of a **single plot** very consistently—which are also the basic requirements of ancient plays.

### Plot

*Riders to the Sea* begins on the Aran Islands, as Nora, a young woman, brings in a small bundle and tells her older sister, Cathleen, that they may be the clothes of their drowned brother Michael. A priest told her the body of a drowned man had been found, but they do not want their mother, Maurya to know. Michael has been missing for a week; the family has already lost the family patriarch as well as four other sons to the sea. They hide the bundle in the turf loft of the cottage. Maurya is busy planning for Michael’s funeral, consumed by her grief and lamenting that she has lost all her sons to the sea. She discusses the last remaining son, Bartley, with her daughters. Bartley is planning to go to sea to sell the family horses. Nora and Cathleen think they need the money, but Maurya is hoping that the priest will stop him due to the dangerous tides.

Bartley enters the cottage looking for rope. Maurya tries to stop him, but he is determined to create a halter for the horses for his trip. Maurya tries to dissuade him by showing him the preparations for Michael’s funeral, but he ignores her. He says goodbye to his sisters, but his mother refuses to give him any blessings as he leaves. This is significant as it is an Irish tradition that a son receives the blessing of his mother before he leaves. Maurya’s daughters are shocked she broke this tradition. As Bartley leaves with the horses, Cathleen notices that he has taken no food and sends Maurya after him to give him food and blessings. She leaves with a stick from Michael, lamenting over how the old people never leave anything behind for the young people in the family, as is customary. When Maurya is gone, her daughters retrieve the bundle of clothes from the loft to check if they are from Michael. Nora observes her own stitching on the clothing, and confirms that they are her brother’s. They now know that their brother’s body has been found and the priest has already buried him.

The sisters hide the clothes again, and they assume Maurya will be in a better mood because she got the chance to bless Bartley. However, she comes back in a panic, saying she saw Michael upon a grey pony. She could not bless Bartley due to the shock. The girls try to calm her down by showing her Michael’s clothes and telling her that her son got a proper Christian burial. As she grieves, villagers come into the cottage, carrying Bartley’s body. The pony Maurya saw, that she thought she saw Michael upon, knocked Bartley into the sea where he drowned. Maurya gets on her knees near Bartley’s corpse and sprinkles him with holy water. She says she is resigned to her fate and can finally sleep at night. After all, the sea has claimed every man in her family, and it can take nothing more from her. The preparations for Michael’s funeral will now be used for Bartley’s. The play ends with Maurya praying that her husband, his father, and her four sons will rest in peace. The curtain falls on her prayer.

### Characters

**Maurya:**

She’s an old peasant woman living on the desolate, impoverished island of Inishmaan.

She has raised six sons, four of whom are known to be dead, as are her husband and her husband’s father—all from the ravages of the sea. She is afraid that Michael, the youngest son, who has been absent unexpectedly for some time, is drowned also, and she tries to dissuade her last son, Bartley, from crossing over the tumultuous sea to sell two horses at the fair on the mainland. Twice unable to give him a journey’s blessing, she has a vision foretelling his death. When her two daughters, after identifying as Michael’s some clothes found on a drowned body, inform her of Michael’s death, she recites the list of the others’ deaths and the circumstances. As she is being persuaded that he is dead, villagers enter to announce the death of her last son, Bartley, who was knocked into the sea by his pony. Instead of becoming bitter and angry, Maurya recognizes that the sea can do no more to harm her, because she has lost all her men. Maurya’s nobility and maturity of spirit enable her to see the good in all of her men now being together. She sprinkles Holy Water over the dead Bartley and asks God’s mercy on the souls of her men, on her own, and, generously, on the souls of everyone left living in the world.

The real heroic trait of Maurya’s character displays itself in her stamina with which she bears the shocks one after another. This stamina comes from her realisation of the truth that no man can be living forever.

Maurya’s religious faith is a mixture of Catholicism and pagan beliefs indigenous to the Aran Islands where she lives.

**- Bartley:**

Bartley is Maurya’s last surviving son, and the only man remaining in the household.

He is determined to go out on the sea to provide for his family, despite the grief he feels after the likely death of his brother Michael. Maurya’s relentlessly urging him to stay home, and the clear risk to his own life of going out to sea in a storm. He dies when he is thrown from his horse into the sea, directly after Maurya sees a vision of Michael’s ghost riding behind him.

**- Catheen**

Cathleen, a daughter about twenty years old. As the older of two sisters, she takes the lead in expressing concern and making arrangements. She sympathizes with her brother’s need to go to sea and criticizes her mother for repeatedly trying to stop him and for not giving him a blessing.

She sends Maurya with some bread to give him. Cathleen is effective in dealing with practical details, as when she identifies some clothes as belonging to her other brother, Michael, drowned nine days earlier.

Cathleen is matter-of-fact and impatient with her mother’s lamentations and visions, telling Maurya of the evidence of Michael’s death.

**- Nora**

Nora, a young girl, another of Maurya’s daughters.

Her main function in the play is to talk with Cathleen and enable the exposition of background and commentary on the action.

**- The Priest**

He never physically appears in the play, but he is often referenced by other characters, particularly in the context of his promise to Maurya that God would not leave her destitute with no son living. This promise turns out to be false, which is no surprise to Maurya.

He is in charge of the identification of Michael’s clothes and he is also in a position to stop Bartley going to Connemara.

### Themes

**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. Different 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.

Though the islanders had formally adopted Christianity, their outlook was fundamentally pagan. The representative of Christian beliefs in the play is the unseen ‘young priest’, who is a controlling authority of the island.

Holy water apparently suggests some element of Christianity in the play when we notice Maurya sprinkling ‘Holy Water’ over the clothes of the drowned Michael.

Besides, throughout the play there are references to the almighty god, especially the conclusion of the play which is Christian in tone: “May the Almighty God have mercy in Bartley’s soul, and on Michael’s soul”.

We can identify some kind of pagan beliefs, considered by many as mere superstitions. An example of this would be Maurya’s vision of the ‘riders’ where she sees Michael’s apparition on the ‘grey’ pony and Bartley riding the ‘red’ mare. Some other pagan beliefs are also evident in Maurya’s dialogues in like when she says that ‘there was a star up against the moon’ (Synge, Collected Plays 40) and Bartley should not go to the sea; it shows the belief of peasant folk in premonitions of death and disaster. Moreover, the custom of lamenting over the dead by keening is yet another Aran practice that Synge himself had observed.

**Gender Roles:**

The characters in the text rigidly adhere to the prescribed gender roles of their time and place.

This play shows us that this society is a male dominate society and woman are doing only household work. Nora is relatively voiceless, while Cathleen is the keeper of the hearth (home). 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. 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" (64). 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?" (64.)

### Tone & Style

Written in a **tragic tone**, Synge's style is unique. His plays are written in **prose**, but they have the **rhythms and cadences of poetry**, a poetry comes from the natural idiom of the peasant. This speech, rich in **natural music** and full of **vivid imagery**, is increased in power by its **compression, and by simplicity.**

**Gaelic Revival / Irish Literary Renaissance:** John Millington Synge’s play Riders to the Sea (1904), uses t**he language of Ireland** – and in particular of the Aran Islands, off the West Coast – to create potent images of the culture and the people, in both tragedy and comedy.

**Irish** (or **Hiberno-English**) has distinctive varietal features of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, although patterns vary considerably between North and South and East and West. In grammar, for example, tense and aspect are structured differently from standard southern English. I do be is a habitual present tense. For example:

MAURYA "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."

The form ‘after’ is used in Irish English to record a completed act or to express recency: thus, they’re after leaving has the meaning of ‘they have just left’, and he was after saying means he had just said. For example:

NORA [in a whisper] Did you hear that, Cathleen? Did you hear a noise in the north-east? CATHLEEN [in a whisper] There’s someone after crying out by the seashore.

Gaelic-influenced word order in questions is also common: Is it ready you are?.

The intention of the play was to portray, in realistic language and action, the Irish character, and the issues of patriotism, self-deceit, resignation, and tragedy.

### Analysis

**Metaphor:** The title of the play is a metaphor. It refers to the riders such as Bartley and Michael, who ride to the sea for business. It is also a metaphor for death: They ride to the sea and never come back. It was taken from the Bible (Exodus), and it’s an extended metaphor meaning “we are all moving toward mortal death”.

**Foreshadowing**: Maurya forecasts her son Bartley’s death.  Another form of foreshadowing comes with Maurya purchasing “the white boards” that are used to build coffins, prior to knowing whether her son Michael was truly dead. Foreshadowing is used well again when Maurya attempts to catch up with her son Bartley to provide him with bread for his trip, and to bless his journey with God’s grace.

**Imagery:** E.g: The clothes: The wet sock and the shirt which belonged to Michael are powerful for his family because they are all that is left of him. They are a reminder of **the fragility of life**.

**Irony:** The white board used to build the coffin which was originally intended for Michael and then actually being used for Bartley, who even took the rope that was going to be used to lower the coffin in the ground.

- The horses: Tragically, and ironically, Bartley believes the horses will secure him money and security, but instead the grey pony leads him to his death: "I'll ride down on the red mare, and the gray pony'll run behind me." (Synge 6)

- The coffin: originally intended for Michael and then being used for Bartley, who even took the rope that was going to be used to lower his brother’s coffin in the ground: "You'd do right to leave that rope, Bartley, hanging by the boards [Bartley takes the rope]. It will be wanting in this place, I'm telling you, if Michael is washed up to-morrow morning, or the next morning, or any morning in the week, for it's a deep grave we'll make him by the grace of God." (Synge 5)

#### Symbols

**- The sea:** The people of the Island depend upon the sea for their survival by fishing. They have to cross the sea for the purchase of the goods and also for the selling of their productions. **The sea stands for the main source and the life for the Islanders**, but meanwhile the same generous sea turns out to **be a destroyer and life taking agent.**

It is an invisible force which shapes the destinies of all the characters. When Bartley has made up his mind to go to the sea, he does not pay any heed to his mother appeals to him not to go that day. As Cathleen says, "it is the life of a young man to be going on the sea".

The sea becomes the Nemesis, against whom the doomed mankind must fight. The sea is the agent of destiny, through which Maurya learns the wisdom and the truth. The tidings of the sea turn the tidings of the life of Maurya and her two daughters. She suffers, she experiences and she learns from the sea.

**- Number nine:** It’s a **symbol of bad luck;** e.g. There is no news of Michael for nine days, and when Bartley died nine unknown women come to Maurya. [“An old woman……. she will do, and isn’t it nine days herself is after crying and keening.”

**- The white boards:** They are present signalling that a fatality will occur; the idea of death is always present. [“Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied”.]

**- The rope: It symbolizes Bartley's death.** That rope was always intended to lower a coffin into the grave, and now that grave will be Bartley's. / “Maurya attempts to keep Bartley from taking the rope, as they might need it if Michael’s body washes up. She then reflects on the injustice of having paid so much for the white boards to make Michael’s coffin since there’s no body to bury yet, and Bartley dismisses the idea that there’s still a chance of finding Michael’s body”.

**- The grey pony** = **death**. Bartley: “I must go now quickly. I'll ride down on the red mare, and the gray pony'll run behind me. . . The blessing of God on you.” // Cathleen: “God forgive you; he's riding the mare now over the green head, and the gray pony behind him”.

**- The red mare:** = **death**. Bartley sets off to the sea riding on the red mare and never comes back.

## Intro Paragraph

Literary Expertise to Revive Irish Cultural Values in Synge’s *Riders to the Sea*

The idea of an independent Ireland, which had been ruled by the British government for hundreds of years, infused the minds of new generations at the end of the nineteenth century. Irish republicans first confronted the English army on 24 April, 1916. This event, which became known as the Eastern Rising, planted the seeds for subsequent wars, namely the War for Independence and the Irish Civil war. One of the reasons why these Irish republicans (mostly Catholics) decided to fight for a nation free from British control was their strong nationalist view fueled by the Irish Literary Renaissance. This latter period in Literature was an attempt to revive Irish cultural heritage and to exalt the richness of its values, traditions and the Gaelic language. One of the main representatives of Irish Literary Renaissance was Irish author John Synge (1871-1909). Irish poet and dramatist, William Yeats, suggested Synge to travel to the Aran Islands and listen to the variety of English spoken there. During his trip to the Aran Islands, he drew inspiration from the islanders to write his magnificent one-act play *Riders to the Sea.* This latter play (1904) presents the story of a mother (Maurya) who loses his father in law, his husband and four of her sons to the sea. Through the use of irony and symbols, Synge skillfully manages to revive Irish cultural values in *Riders to the Sea.*

### MLA citation

Synge, John Millington. *Riders to the Sea*. 1904. *Project Gutenberg*, 2008.

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"The Aglo-Irish War", BBC, September 24, 2014. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/aftermath/af04.shtml

University of Cincinnati. The Irish Literary Revival, n.d. http://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/exhibits/irish-lit/sample-page/

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