Symbolism in Rider to the Sea Essay Sample
J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea is fraught with legion symbols promoting the domestic calamity to the place of a cosmopolitan narrative of enduring. Most of the symbols used in the drama are archetypical in maintaining with the classical spirit of the drama. The most powerful symbol is that of Sea. the giver and taker of life. The island-dwellers depend on it for their nutriment but it besides snatches the unrecorded that it gives. Synge makes usage of the popular belief that the inundation tide induces birth while the ebb tide causes decease. reminding us of shakespeare’s intervention in Henry V. Like Shelley ‘s West air current. it is at one time destroyer and refinisher of life. The sea symbolizes the tragic fate of the aran island-dwellers. The sea is a supernatural entity over which even the Almighty God of the Christians has no control. That is apparent from Maurya’ s rejection of the’young ‘ priest Another archetypical symbol is the Riders.
The menfolk of the island are all riders who. in order to maintain the household wheel a traveling. sit on the sea. Like Santiago. they venture into the sea merely to be defeated reminding us of ageless human quandary. There are several symbols associated with life and decease. They exist side by side. Mention may be made of the ruddy female horse of Bartley and gray pony of Michael. While ruddy bases for viriliy. Grey symbolizes decease. Bartley besides sets out his fearful journey in the shirt that his dead brother left at place. . The usage of figure nine is another of import symbol derived from mythology. It is a ternary three and hence a perfect figure.
There is no intelligence of Michael for nine yearss and Maurya weeps for her lost boy for nine yearss. Maurya’s Turing of the empty cup oral cavity downwards is another important symbol proposing a failure of Christian consolation and demoing the heathen subject of agony and repudiation. Therefore. the symbols employed here conveying out the tragic strategy of the drama
