"Sympathy between man and nature" Landscape and Loss in Synge's "Riders to the Sea"

Author(s): JOY KENNEDY

Source: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Winter 2004, Vol. 11,
No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 15-30
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44086223

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 JOY KENNEDY

"Sympathy between man and

Landscape and Loss in
Synge's Riders to the Sea

In Inishmaan one is forced to believe in a sympathy bet

man and nature . . . ( The Aran Islands , I, 75)

In 1899 John Millington Synge was nearly thrown fro

into raging swells off the island of Inis Meáin. "[T]he g
curled and arched themselves above me; then in an instant I was
flung up into the air and could look down on the heads of the row-
ers, as if we were sitting on a ladder, or out across a forest of white
crests to the black cliff of Inishmaan" (CW 97). The danger of the
sea would later become a haunting motif in Synge's 1904 Riders to
the Sea , a tragedy of a mother who loses her last son to the waves.
There is a striking duality of landscape in this work; the sea func-
tions as both the provider for the family and its potential destroyer.
This duality is mirrored in Maurya, for she is both the nurturer of
her children as well as the inadvertent destroyer of one. By exam-
ining Synge's use of nature with an ecocritical approach, one can
see that it does not conform to the tradition of British writers. It is
not pastoral, romantic, or sublime but is, rather, a blend of uniquely
Irish ambiguities towards place - ambiguities which ecocritics have
mostly failed to attend to. Famines, forced removes, and struggles
against the rocky turf for farming have created, historically, an of-
ten uneasy sense of place for Irish writers. In Riders to the Sea , the
dualities of land as both provider and killer are evident, as well as
the personal, spiritual struggles of Synge himself. If the sea is viewed

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 11.1 (Winter 2004)

Copyright © 2004 by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

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 16 ISLE

as representat
resolution beco
nature" become
this interconn
full spectrum o
The haunting
tal indifferenc
after all, despit
that God woul
(62). The play
edies but when
reviews were m
and too obviou
Bartley's body
ers felt that th
Joyce's critici
form to the tr
I read it, I hav
spot" (qtd. in T
ally well receiv
avid theater at

I have come to t
than Riders to t
oughly in-earnes
wake episode so
could not stand
during its progr
gloom of the ter
not applaud.1 Fr

The key power

ambiguities ab
audience initia
ocean represen
Darwinian world of chance and survival? The debate still contin-
ues over whether the play is tipped more toward a Christian or a
pagan resolution. Maurya's grief over Bartley's body has been in-
terpreted just as dualistically as King Lear's over Cordelia's. Are
her final words a resolution to Christ or surrender to superstition?
Before examinations of such dualities and the role of nature in them,
it would be helpful to see how Synge developed his own views of
sympathy between "man and nature" on the Aran Islands.

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 "Sympathy between man and nature " 17

The Aran Islands Experience

"There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea,"

Maurya says, as she considers Michael's disappearance and wonders
if his body can be identified. She continues with a gruesome truth:
"for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, it's
hard set his own mother would be to say what man was it" (CW 69).
Synge records two bodies (one headless) being washed up on shore
during his Aran Island visits. He himself had experienced waves so
forceful that he had turned "instinctively" to hide. Drowning was a
common hazard, and with a sense of fatalism men did not learn to
swim. "A man who is not afraid of the sea will be soon be drownded,"
Synge was told before stepping into a boat in particularly rough weather,
"for he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But we do be afraid of
the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again" (CW 117).
Nearly all critics agree that Synge's visits to the Aran Islands in
1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, and 1902 were the most critical catalysts to
Synge's development as a mature writer. The customs, language, and
folklore he observed would later be distilled into The Playboy of the
Western World , The Well of the Saints , and other works. But Riders to the
Sea is unique in that it is the only work set on the Aran landscape, and
some critics also suggest that it is his most successful work. Most fo-
cus on only two influences from these island experiences: language
and culture. Indeed, the folklore he heard there is so nicely woven
into his work that it caused Seamus Ó Cuisin to comment in 1909 that
"we are not certain where the eavesdropper ends and the creator be-
gins" (qtd. in Grene 12). But the influence of nature itself has often
been neglected in Synge studies, except in analyses of pagan refer-
ences. Yet the raging, ambivalent, or indifferent ocean is what gives the
play its force.
Yeats perhaps hinted at the importance of nature to Synge by
suggesting the islands served as a kind of "objective correlative,"
which means they provided a geographical centering for both intel-
lectual and spiritual growth: "He was a drifting, silent man full of
hidden passion, and loved wild islands, because there, set out in the
light of day, he saw what lay hidden in himself" (qtd. in Thornton
74). Such a dichotomous topography moved him deeply.2 Yi-Fu Tuan
would describe such an immediate attraction to land as topophilia,
"the affective bond between people and place or setting" (4). Synge's
"topophilia" is more than just a love for the land, but an approach at
how the environment is valued for both local culture and survival.
Although his journals do contain an outsider's bias and projections
of child-like simplicity on the people, he does not descend into sheer

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18 ISLE

sentimentality
boats to be shi
women keening
nessed were inc
His intentions
to the playgoer
disservice by co
that Synge was
categories or ph
erful experience
said himself, "I
who were under
would be drown
rocks" (CW 162
it is effective in
out in the histo
father, and six
birth I had with
some of them w
gone now the lo
The play open
will be a stylist
are nets and oil
by the ocean.
the family's en
dual sea symbo
new white boar
for Michael's c
wheel often sa
the hearth whe
to Bartley. This
the sea as both
of the men's sp
the women's s
early in the pla
who had said h
down the coas
props transcend
nections, both
land, as well as

Many sorts of f
hung upon the w

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 "Sympathy between man and nature" 19

islands has an almost personal character, . . . and being made from materi-
als that are common here, yet to some extent peculiar to the island, they
seem to exist as a natural link between the people and the world that is
about them.4 (CW 58-59)

Each object in the setting is central in deciphering the characters' rela-

tionship to community and land. As Nicholas Grene eloquently puts
it: "There is a special poignance in the simple objects which remain
there before us, like rocks with the tides of human emotion eddying
round them" (48). While the objects of the hearth and kitchen con-
stantly remain in sight, the real crux of setting, the ocean, remains
unseen. However, it is always kept foremost in mind by the dialogue.
Cathleen asks, "Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora?" "Mid-
dling bad, God help us," Nora answers. "There's a great roaring in the
west, and it's worse it'll be getting when the tide's turned to the wind"
(62). When Bartley enters to get the rope hanging on the wall, Maury a
warns that he should leave it, as it will be needed to lower Michael's
coffin down if his body is found. The act of Bartley taking the rope
begins a long series of foreshadowings that continues to the play's sad
conclusion. The imagery of the sea is always kept foremost in the dia-
logue: "wind is raising the sea, and there was a star up against the
moon, and it rising in the night" (62). Landscape is reinforced by words;
what the viewer can't see is always suggested. When Bartley asks if
the boat is coming to the pier, Nora answers, "She's passing the green
head and letting fall her sails." We are told the oar caught the body
that could be Michael's when two men were rowing and "passing the
black cliffs of the north." The family had been "looking each day for
nine days, [with] a strong wind blowing a while back from the west
and south" (63). Nature is always suggested and reinforced by fore-
shadowing and language.
Synge wrote on the islands:

Now a man has been washed ashore in Donegal with one pampooty on
him, and a striped shirt with a purse in one of the pockets, and a box of
tobacco. For three days the people here have been trying to fix his identity
. . . we met the mother of the man who was drowned from this island, still
weeping and looking out over the sea. (CW 136)

This event was surely an inspiration for Riders. Even the image of a
mother weeping is suggested when Nora whispers that she hears "a
noise in the north-east" and Cathleen answers, "There's some one af-
ter crying out by the seashore" (69). Maurya begins to list the men of
her life who died by drowning: "there was Sheamus and his father,
and his own father again" (69).

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 20 ISLE

Maurya can b
scape of mate
Bartley. Syng
said, when she
tried to say 'Go
throat. A while
nights the hou
provides the p
Bartley already
bless him? Or w
According to t
mother could
by supernatura
ens the play's p
fering from h
ers will be tak
opments. For n
that Bartley is
connect her to
she takes off h
sion of Michael
This imagery c
ing waves, as w
waves on Inish Meáin which salted his hair.
Maurya is nearly always viewed as a positive character. Her
name has been connected to several root sources such as "muir"
for sea, and "Moira," the Greek word for fate (Plunka 131). Some
suggest that the name hints at the "prototypical Mary" (Durbach
364) or a "pagan priestess of antiquity" (Casey 94). Many have seen
her as the universal mother, while others as "the Sorrowing Mother"
and a Pièta figure (Durbach 365). Some, less convincingly, connect
her to Formorian, the Celtic nightmare queen (Currie and Bryan
144-45). It is clear that her duality as nurturer and inadvertent de-
stroyer mirrors the duality of the sea, which makes the play even
more tragic. She is life-denying. Her refusal to give her blessing,
her forgetting the bread, and her taking the turf away from the fire
are life-denying symbols. As Synge notes of the islands,

The maternal feeling is so powerful on these islands that it gives a life

of torment to the women. Their sons grow up to be banished as soon
as they are of age, or to live here in continual danger on the sea; their
daughters go away also, or are worn out in their youth with bearing
children that grow up to harass them in their own turn a little later.
(CW 108)

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 " Sympathy between man and nature " 21

Maurya's grief is the power of the play, the force that, as Holloway
has told us, moved the first audience so much that it forgot to applaud.
Yet it should be noted that she and the other women remain passive to
the ocean's force.5 Nature is the propelling figure. To continue with an
examination of the active role of nature in the play, it is essential to see
how Synge may or may not conform to the traditional approaches of
nature representation.

The Irish View of Place

The Irish view of place is a particularly ambivalent one, defined by

both political and natural displacements. Foreign invasions and natu-
ral disasters such as the Great Famine have created a dual view to-
wards landscape; it is often either viewed with grand mythological
connotations or, according to some critics, contempt. As Patrick Sheeran
notes, "Death and destruction are linked to memory and place in Ire-
land by a deathless chain of names" (191). History, place, and memory
become inexorably linked.
Today, nearly one-third of the entire population of Ireland lives in
Dublin and its suburbs. The rural landscape has suffered from associa-
tions with failure, removes, and poverty. As the character of the Blind
Man says to Robert Emmet in Denis Johnston's play The Old Lady Says
'No!,' "this is not a city of the Living, but of the Dark and the Dead!"
(Owens and Radner 398). Indeed, the dead give history to place; much
has been written on the Irish history of place names and removals from
family land. Much of this writing is also coupled with a sense of loss:

Irish sense of place is not merely the residue of the ignominy and
wretchedness of peasant life in the nineteenth century, nor does it
derive exclusively from some vague, atavistic, mythical identification
with the land. . . . [I]t is a verbal or nominal preoccupation and has
little to do with any actual cultivation of things. . . . [I]t relates to death
rather than to life. (Sheeran 194)

In some ways Riders to the Sea exemplifies such ambivalence. The land-
scape of the sea is viewed with awe, practicality, and despair. As well
as being both a provider and killer of men in the community, the ocean
is also both dividing and unifying. It isolates the world of Maurya but
this isolation, as Synge notes in The Aran Islands , has also helped pre-
serve Irish folk customs and language. Gaelic survived, although this
language was also connected to the rural lands' associations with pov-
erty and failure.
So how does Synge's representation of nature differ from earlier
traditions and that of his contemporaries? Such an analysis would be

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 22 ISLE

pivotal in under
"Ecological thin
world as seriou
man realm of s
at the folklore a
lier, has often
his other plays,
he was a part. L
the Irish sense
work is part of
Place and natur
mythic heroine
absence of spirit
There is also a m
that of the trad
"beauteous form
English writers.
and more "real"
phy and transc
ing, much unlik
rian poetry. It
Homeric epics
"whale-road" is
killer and savior.
While its styles and successes may not be agreed upon, it is clear
that Synge is doing something different here with uses of landscape.
Sean Ó Tuama notes that Synge's nature passages are similar to the
Old Irish "impressionist reactions" to natural phenomena which are
revealed in Irish folk music, while Nicholas Grene notes that the land-
scape ties to a sense of national identity which is best illustrated in
Russian literature. There is more community in Synge's natural world,
unlike the worlds of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other British writers
who praised the individual's pilgrimages and walks through land-
scape.7 Bartley's death joins him to a community of dead, including all
the family members who Maurya recites, and he is grieved by the com-
munity of the living. For many Irish writers, "the importance of com-
munity supplants the importance of place; to put it in another way,
place becomes community, community place" (Ó Tuama 262). Nature,
again, reveals a duality - for its harshness bonds the community while
also isolating it geographically.
Such dualities present an interesting construct. As Andrew Carpen-
ter notes in Place , Personality , and the Irish Writer, "The problem is that so
much in Ireland can validly be interpreted in two ways. . . . Everyone

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 " Sympathy between man and nature" 23

brought up in Ireland is very soon made aware of multiple points of

view on many things" (180). In Riders , if one construes landscape as
encompassing the community as well as nature, the dualities present
themselves clearly: the language, the religion, and even that of the rural
being encroached upon by the modern. Notice that the flannel of Bartley's
shirt is mass produced, and Cathleen questions: "aren't there great rolls
of it in the shops of Galway, and isn't it many another man may have a
shirt of it as well as Michael himself?" (66). It is the hand-stitching on the
stocking that helps Nora know the body was indeed Michael's: "It's the
second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score stitches,
and I dropped four of them." The impersonality of the mass production
is juxtaposed to the personal, the modern to the old. And Maurya can be
seen as straddling between both these worlds, "standing in between old
and new generations" (King 49). In The Aran Islands in particular, one
sees that the community cannot stay the same forever. Synge noted that
more and more young men were going to either the mainland or America,
and when they left, the lamentations were just as grief-stricken as for
those who had drowned - for they are surely just as gone for good.
The Irish sense of place is one filled with dualities, just as the role of
nature is in Riders to the Sea. Maurya and her family are powerless
against the forces of the ocean, just as her entire community sphere is
powerless also, as illustrated by the women's keening empathetically
over Bartley's body. As William Smyth notes in "Explorations of Place,"
it is the culture of a people that is "its full sense of place" (6). The
ongoing debate over the pagan and Christian imagery in the play has
already been alluded to. To discern if the play's conclusion tips more
toward the pagan or the Christian, it is interesting to posit a third,
scientific alternative: that of nature as Darwinian indifference.

Synge's Darwinism

The question of what type of nature is being depicted in Riders to

the Sea may be central for the play's interpretations. Is it one which
spurs reconciled Christian belief, pagan superstitions, or a harsh
Darwinian nature where only the fittest survive? Synge had already
struggled with spiritual beliefs earlier in his life which had sepa-
rated him from his family's strict orthodox beliefs. His first read-
ing of Darwin's On the Origin of Species had already produced a
shock in him:

It opened in my hands at a passage where he asks how can we explain the

similarity between a man's hand and a bird's or bat's wings except by
evolution. I flung the book aside and rushed out into the open air - it was

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24 ISLE

summer and we
and the grass its
studies showed m
the more it rush

Synge's diaries
and Henry Drum
Marx, Nietzsch
autobiography t
Darwin" (CW 12
phenomena in hi
changes, and st
ists' Field Club
scientific attitu
not interpret lif
the time I was si
good deal of wo
ter o "Seed Time
Synge ripe for
Synge felt the
possibly on the
harsh coexisten
dead, he writes

In this cry of pai

bare for an ins
isolation in the f
They are usually
indifference or p
before the horro

Such keening w
ter, keening ov
As stated earl
sonification. A
pattern of the
liberately creat
post-Darwinian
to any place pe
can be argued t
Christian nor
Maurya's worl
can examine th
counter them t

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 "Sympathy between man and nature " 25

As reflected in a Darwinian philosophy, the family's first concern is

survival. Bartley is leaving to get a good price for the horse at the fair,
but Maurya counters by trying to put a price on a son: "If it was a
hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price
of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?" Yet
Bartley must leave for the necessity of economic survival. The reader
pities his situation, yet surely knows what is to happen. Ronald Gaskell
has noted, "If nature is related to man, as in Riders to the Sea, it is by the
needs of living [. . . ] as there is nothing sentimental in his [Synge's]
awareness of nature" (178). The needs of living relate to the economic
forces working on Bartley.
After Bartley's death, Maurya states "I'll have no call now to be
going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain."
Samhain is a pagan rite, a feast for the dead, and one which Gene
Plunka states is nearing in the play. Although it is not clear if Bartley is
indeed going out on a pagan holy day, the reference does provide fore-
shadowing. Synge tells in The Aran Islands of the "curious zest" given
to the observance of holy days. An islander had told him that some
men went out fishing on a holy day and were drowned. "'Ah!' said the
man who told me the story, Tm thinking it will be a long time before
men will go out again on a holy day. That storm was the only storm that
reached into the harbour the whole winter, and I'm thinking there was
something in iť" (CW 137).
Bartley's death is also foreshadowed by his taking Michael's flan-
nel shirt. Irish lore includes suggestions that the dead still own the
property they once possessed, and may return to claim it (Plunka 134).
Bartley's taking of the rope, which was originally intended to lower
Michael's coffin, also foreshadows his death, and Maurya tells that
"the pig with black feet had been eating it" earlier. References to black
abound. Bartley's death is a death because of his defiance: defiance of
nature, as the sea is clearly "roaring in the west" and the "wind ris-
ing," and defiance of Maurya.
The Christian elements often noted in Riders may have previ-
ously been overemphasized. For example, many critics have looked
at the gray horse in regard to the pale horse, pale rider of Revela-
tions. However, its usage is probably from an accumulation of sto-
ries Synge heard on the islands. Synge heard a tale of a woman
who had been spirited away by the fairies but returned on a grey
horse, and another of a woman who saw her drowned son riding a
horse (CW 159, 164). One woman told Synge of her sister marrying a
German husband in America, who kept her "in great comfort, with
a fine 'capulí glas' ("grey horse") to ride on." Synge wrote that "This
girl had decided to escape in the same way from the drudgery of the

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 26 ISLE

island" (143). T
affirmed that "
[fairies]." And
boots) on him
Of course, many
ate in Riders , li
the two worlds
portray the live
these words of a
still hoarse wit
has observed tha
or "Almighty G
sarily imply re
ing, "The sea (fa
question then ar
it merely a natu
I think it is qu
of the pagan an
that the water
Bartley's goin
vengeful "sea g
ture from the
tradition of p
similar to Jack
the protagonist
Perhaps Bartle
nature. And p
after all, but m
For neither p
Bartley. The h
empty cup wh
is evidence of t
the men she has loved:

They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me
. . . I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind
breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the
surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hit-
ting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting
Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way
the sea is when the other women will be keening. (70)

Nora wonders at Maurya's "being so quiet and easy now" when

she grieved loudly for Michael for days. Many readers have interpreted

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 "Sympathy between man and nature" 27

the final lines as emotionally uplifting - ones as affirming faith and

stoic acceptance. It is here where critics see her as the Mary figure, or the
Pièta image over Bartley 's body. But Cathleen describes Maurya in bro-
ken terms: "It's getting old she is, and broken." I would argue that the
conclusion is an acceptance, but not of Christian or pagan beliefs. Rather,
it is an acceptance of the supreme indifference of nature. "No man at all
can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied," Maurya says (71).
Instead of a spiritual interpretation, perhaps the reader should call to
mind a passage Synge wrote dryly in his journal: "Nature is cruel to
living things" (CW 23).
Such a naturalistic presentation where man (and woman) is a vic-
tim of the environment only heightens the final tragedy. If the play is
indeed about a spiritual loss, as well as a family's loss, then it only
exemplifies the isolating role of nature. Una Ellis-Fermor has remarked
that Synge's nature passages are much like the nature poetry of ninth
or tenth-century Irish Monks, and "[t]he absence of a sense of God/
Creator seems most marked in the Old and Middle Irish nature lyrics"
(qtd. in Ó Tuama 263). If indeed the landscape Synge presents is a god-
less one for both pagan and Christian deities, then the play can be read
with new meaning. A Darwinian approach would show that there is
little room for adaptation for Maurya's family, as for any family on the
harsh and isolated island. They may survive, but it will be hard. Maurya
says "it's only a bit of wet flour we do have to eat, and maybe a fish
that would be stinking." Many readers have observed the inclusive
plural of "riders" in the title, which suggests the long lineage of death
that has preceded Bartley. But the title can also show that Bartley is an
Everyman figure, for essentially we are all riders to the sea.

Conclusion

An ecocritical approach to Riders to the Sea is essential for analyz-

ing the tragic force of Synge's play. While most criticism has focused
on his use of language and folklore, looking at nature specifically re-
veals that Synge has created a unique view of landscape. It is neither
British romantic nor Victorian sterile. It is neither personified nor sen-
timentalized. It is similar to the traditional Irish approach in its dual
view, but yet uniquely Synge's. And although many readers see it as a
pagan force, Synge may have very likely intended the ocean to repre-
sent an indifferent, Darwinian landscape. Such indifference, juxtaposed
to the Christian and pagan elements of the play, creates a deeper dual-
ity than has previously been explored. For it points to a spiritual loss as
opposed to a religious affirmation, and to a mother as random victim as
opposed to idealized heroine. Such a view would portray all the matter-

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 28 ISLE

of-f act reality

wished to portr
No other wor
again did he ach
it is so well don
possibilities of
and nature" th
theme of the w
twined in a net
Synge's "person
cannot explain
Irish writer wh
traditional Irish
religion and to
(222). Perhaps.
observations ex
the catalyst for
Islands which g
After his boat
Synge wrote: "E
of the waves, th
would be better
survived the se
Bartley, Micha
to the waves. T
for the family
ter of Maurya
ent destroyer;
liberate construc
vision, not just
thunders in om

NOTES

1. Holloway notes that the only "trifle" that spoiled o

him was a label on the side of Bartley's stretcher that r
Co."
2. From Notebook 12:

A so sudden gust [so] beautiful is a danger. It is well arranged that for the
most part we do not realize the beauty of a new wonderful experience till
it has grown familiar and so safe to us. If a man could be supposed to come
with a fully educated perception of music, yet quite ignorant of it and hear

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 " Sympathy between man and nature" 29

for the first time let us say Lamoureux's Orchestra in a late symphony of
Beethoven I doubt his brain would ever recover from the shock . . . Some
such emotion was in me the day I looked first on these rising magnificent
waves towering in dazzling white and green before the cliff; If I had not
seen waves before I would have likely lost my sense. {The Aran Islands 97)

3. In "West Kerry" Synge records that on Great Blasket Island a man said,
"There has been no one drowned on this island for forty years, and that is a
great wonder, for it is a dangerous life" (CW 249).
4. Synge was insistent on finding real stage props for the play, even going
as far as asking that the actress who would play Cathleen learn how to spin
so that there would be "no fake about the show" (Grene 42). Lady Gregory
wrote to Yeats, exasperated, that "I am distracted trying to get Synge's 'prop-
erties' together for staging Riders to the Sea

go to . . . get as little as possible for this time and the real

to the Sea will probably be a stock piece for a long time
staged. However, I am promised a spinning wheel
Saddlemyer 77).
5. James M. Cahalan comments that the passivity of M
"romanticized, remote emblem" in his chapter on two
writers, Emily Lawless and Liam O'Flaherty (39).
6. Synge describes his personal view of nature in his
wish was that nature should be untouched by man, wh
beautiful or not did not interest me. A wood near Rath
my idea of bliss until someone told me it was a piece of
planting on an artificial hillock. I hated the neighbour
(CW 12).
7. Ann Saddlemyer notes that as an avid photographer
ways included people in his landscapes (repeated in Car

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Currie, Ryder Hector and Martin Bryan. " Riders
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