Riders to the sea – Symbols and Images/ Hints and Forebodings / Atmosphere

Riders to the Sea is one of the greatest tragedies in modern time in one act. Mainly by virtue of its concentrated strength of conception and execution. In conception and tragic intensity of the story has an austere beauty of a Greek tragedy and in execution the imagery and symbols are so intensely employed as to refer to us not only to the world of Irish history and folklore but to the world of archetypal symbolism. Symbolism is one of the major literary devices with the poets and dramatists to create an atmosphere in their works without giving a detailed description of their ideas and emotions.

In Riders to the Sea the most universal, archetypal symbol setting up a  tragic atmosphere is that of the sea which is the main protagonist in the play and also become symbolic of all those elemental forces that man can neither compliment nor control. The sea, though a vast expanse of water is a symbol of the cradle and grave of the grave of the islanders.The heroic riders and their horses comprise another archetypal symbol creating the tragic atmosphere . The superstition regarding the “grey horse” perhaps springs from the “pale horse” of Revelation : “ And I looked and beheld a pale horse”, and his name that sat on him was Death. It is therefore highly appropriate that Bartley should die immediately after Maurya’s vision of him being followed by a ‘grey pony’ and that grey pony itself should be the agent of Death.

Synge has made brilliant use of other symbols , too. He has made the symbolic use of the ‘number nine’ subtly in the play-Michael was missing for nine days. Maurya, like Niobe wept for nine days for her lost son. Maurya herself recalling the drowning incident of Patch reports that she saw two women and three women and four women coming in.-these adds up to nine. Again, as do the numbers mentioned by Bartley himself when he says optimistically, “ you will see me coming  again in two days or three days or may be in four days if the wind is bad.”Thus, the number nine is very symbolically used in the play to imply something ominous.

There are some other very engrossing symbols which constantly arrest the attention of the audience. The drowned man symbolizes ‘sad mortality’. The “spring well” symbolizes life. “Nail” symbolizes pain and finality. The stick that Maurya takes on her way to the Spring well and Bartley’s wearing of Michael’s shirt are all symbolic and artfully manifested in the play where the living and the dead are intermingled even in their possessions.  The new rope that was brought to be used in the coffin of Michael is taken by Bartley to serve as a halter for himself, something which look like a hangman’s noose. Brad is being baked for Bartley, but ironically it is eaten up by men who are to make coffin – bread is symbolic of the last supper that pr-eluded the end of Christ.

Further again, the Irish have strong faith in superstitions and symbolism is quite related with it. Maurya who tries to hold back her son from undertaking the risky voyage to the windy sea says- “there is a star up by the sickle moon”- this image of a star by the sickle moon is a symbolic manifestation of something ominous and as such it is a foreboding, a presaging the death of Bartley. The  colours of the horses are symbolic too- the “red” color stands for vigor and strength while the “grey” colour is unmistakably suggestive of death; new clothes obviously allude to the new linen,  as recorded in the Holy Bible.

Thus Synge makes full use of symbols and images in order to excite our imagination and to create the conceivable tragic atmosphere within a short compass . The dramatist caters to this traditional precept that the final event in the drama should have a ‘probability’ and should not come as a sudden shock which is detrimental to artistic pleasure.

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Riders to the sea- as one act play

John  Mellington Synge’s Riders to the sea is one of the greatest tragedies in one act the world has ever produced.The origin of the one act play can be traced to the Satyr plays of the Greek of the 4^th century B.C. which were intended to provide relief at the end of the performance of serious tragedies.The modern one act plays are the replica of the Greek Satyr plays particularly in respect that both can be enjoyed without too much expense of effort and time.

A one act play, as the name itself signifies, is a play confined within a single act, but it is in no way a three act or five act play, nor it can be elaborated into a five act drama- it is as distinct from the full length play as the short story is from the novel;  and whether a single act comprises one scene only or is cut up into several scenes that is simply a technical matter. As a result ,a one act play cannot afford to deal with a slice of life and gets hold of a particular situation or incident charged with immense dramatic possibilities. Evidently, the concentration not elaboration is the central spirit of a one act play. Indeed Synge’s soul-stirring single scene tragedy, Riders to the sea in spite of its brief compass attains a tragic sublimity that invites comparison with Shakespeare’s. The plot of Riders to the sea is compact to the extreme and closely knit and it produces the required unity of impression- though brief, it is complete in itself. It has , within its small compass, the beginning, the middle and the end: the exposition consisting of the conversation between Cathleen and Nora, complication and climax followed by catastrophe and denuament where mother’s elegiac blessings of the living and the dead and her stoical resignation to the will of God adds a special flavor of completeness, giving the play an extraordinary stature of universal significance.

It is undeniable that with this unity of action, the unities of time and place are also strictly maintained – the action of the play begins only about an hour or so before the dead body of Bartley is brought to the house and the span of time in which the action occurs is just about five or six hours of a day.But what is more notable that the action of the play never moves away from the tiny cottage kitchen .

Another important feature of one act play is the fewness of character.Unlike the plethora of characters of the full length drama, the numbers of characters in Riders to the Sea can be instantly named- Maurya, Cathleen, Nora, Bartley, the young priest, an absentee character and a few keening women. 

The unity of atmosphere also contributes to the effectiveness of Riders to the Sea as one act play.  The dismal setting with ropes and white boards for the coffin , the constantly weeping afflicted mother, the hushed voice of the two daughter and the presence of number-symbols give uniformly a dark hue to the atmosphere.

Thus, as a piece of tragedy Riders to the Sea , the suigeneris of twentieth century literature is perhaps he greatest of the modern one act plays.R.J. Rees rightly calls the play “ a masterpiece of our dramatic literature”.

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The Character of Jimmy Porter

Jimmy Porter is the male protagonist in Osborne Kitchen Sink Drama Look Back in Anger(1956). He is the representative of the Angry Young Generation that the post-world –war-second socio –political ethos generated. Jimmy is strongly conscious of the present condition of human life- that human existence has been degenerated even far below the bovine standard. Other men and women, who, as it were, sleep in the den of ignorance, unconsciousness and lowliness, cannot realize it. Standing on the debris of utter damnation Jimmy continues trumpeting to wake up his generation to consciousness. Unfortunately, others, for whom”April is the cruelest month” are not conscious of the Status qua and what is more they are unwilling to be conscious.This accounts for why Jimmy unleashes vitriolic anger on the heads of those whom he confronts in due course of reading newspaper, taking tea, hearing the music of Vaughan Williams and playing on the trumpet. Besides his wife Alison Porter , his friend Cliff, Helena, his wife’s friend, his mother-in-law, Nigel, his brother-in –law, Colonel Redfern, his father- in-law-all are the scapegoats of his anger. Endowed with apocalyptic vision , Jimmy intends to burn the existing condition to ashes by the fire of his anger. Jimmy’s anger is, therefore, more redemptive.

One understands that Jimmy’s is a highly tragic predicament, for he is entrapped in the labyrinth of his own consciousness. He can neither come out of his consciousness , nor those , who live with him can enter into it.It is his consciousness that destroys him and, therefore, he has become destructive to others .His trumpeting suggests his endeavor to summon people for waking up and his cry for salvation. It is synonymous with Hallelujah. Thus, Jimmy’s ‘over consciousness’ is his hamartia, if he is analyzed as a tragic protagonist. This metaphysical consciousness , that alienates Jimmy from those who crowd in his surrounding world, turns him into an above- the –average character.  It makes him Prophet –like , for a prophet only properly realizes the damnation of an era and sets out to usher in a golden millennium.

To identify Jimmy with a prophet exclusively is to commit a great blunder, for he is not led by the prophetic motto, amo vincit omnia, meaning love conquers over the universe. In other words, though Jimmy has the palpable perception of the rottenness of the status qua, he does not know the means of heralding a golden millennium. Therefore , he is called a ‘frustrated messiah’.

John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger dramatizes ‘the panorama of futility’ that became contemporary history. Jimmy’s consciousness in the play serves as the presence of the blind prophet Tiresius in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. The play gives us a temperature of social protest and the weather is blisteringly hot.Jimmy, who embodies the Lutheran rebelliousness, is the fuming British malcontent. One knows that the post-fifties sociopolitical an economic ethos has given birth to Jimmy Porter who embodies the spirit of every young man of the time.He is a social rebel and an intellectual misfit.

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