QUESTIONS+ANSWERS FOR THE TEST:

1. Riders to the sea as a tragedy

2. Riders to the sea a one act play (features and all)

3. Comment on the language used by Synge in riders to

the sea

4. Riders to the sea is the story of Mauryas

transformation, evaluate

1
 Define what a tragedy is according to the Greeks and
Aristotle
 Tragic hero- Maurya
 Tragic flaw- loved her sons too much, human
attachment
 Catastrophe- deaths of the men in the family done by
nature
 Central belief (fate)- the men’s are fated to die in the
act, title corresponds to the fate of them dying
 Scenario with Maurya
 First she doesn’t really care but then after her last kid
(male) dies she looses her shit
 She cant even have kids now because she’s old
 The symbolisms and all
 Numbers, colours etc
 The play starts wit ha sense of suspense kinda
foreshadowing
 Remembering Michels death etc
 Starts wit ha reemergence of death so kinda
foreshadowing
 The bread is the symbol for the last supper kinda and
she didnt want to foreshadow her owns sons death by
giving him the bread
  Unlike a Shakespearean tragedy they aren’t the cause
of their own deaths its nature who is the cause them up
big time not them self
 Lot of black colour reference
 5 stages of grief
 Shes a pagan
 Jews don’t eat pork
 Mauryas transformation because character
development and all because every tragedy has a
character development

3
 Synge was considers a man ahead of his time and it
reflected in the way he wrote
 Symbolism, colour, numbers etc
 Women as the protagonist
 Nature is the antagonist
 Sparse, economical use of language
 Not to wordy
 Its not over embellished
 Superstition
 Religion references
 A lot of women influence
 Opens with women only and them doing domestic
work
 Double meanings
 Lot of play on numbers and colours
 Unlike a Shakespearean play
 ‘Young men floating’ pg 44 Maurya
 Michel gave mauryas the stick shes using hence
foreshadowing her death as well
 Bartley was wearing Michels shirt hence death also
 Keening is also Irish culture
  Invoked colour imagery: black gray
 Oblivious mystique of the sea
 Fate and luck

4
 At the start shes all sad and shit but by the end she
needs to accept her fate and realize that she has no one
else to lose now
 She doesn’t want to accept the fact that all her sons are
dead or will die so she doesnt even give bartley the
bread because bread -> Christ -> last meal -> death
 The nails and the coffin and how she was ready for the
death of her children
 At the end she was exhausted and somewhat glad
 She didnt have to go through all this now
 All was over finally
 No more pain, sadness, nothing
 Maurya becomes a mother to all the riders lost at sea