Drama Essay, Riders to the Sea Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Drama , Riders to the Sea - Essay Example In the end, she is left with only enough strength to stumble into her grave. Though painful and lacerating, Maurya’s suffering has been worthwhile. Her ultimate recognition of pain, and her acceptance of death as the irrevocable end of human existence does not compensate for her losses; but certainly, it  makes the losses appear meaningless in a broad human context: the  knowledge of life is available only to those  who have been chastened and purified by suffering. Maurya in the end negates life and accepts the ravages of the death. She becomes a stoic. She becomes a universal figure who can induce others to acquire â€Å"calm of mind, all passion spent†. This purgation of emotion comes after experience (Milton, 87). Death is undoubtedly a universal phenomenon but that should not mean one should be pessimistic about life. She is merely an old woman in a family of fishers on the barren and windswept Aran Island. The poor and illiterate Maurya is taught and enriched only by her experience. Her life has been marked by a series of bereavements. Her husband, father-in-law and all her six sons perish in the sea. When the play opens, we find her almost at the nadir of psychological setback. Michael has been missing for nine days and is possibly dead. Maurya is restless and laments continually. The readers find her confronting the mysteries of the unknown from whose bounds no traveler returns. Her sorrows and lamentations over Michael’s death is a poignant picture of loss and misery. She has acquired a strange, almost uncanny knowledge of premonitions. For years, she has looked at the sea and the sky, trying to figure out the set of the wind and the timings of the tide. For years, she has knocked at the doors of the impenetrable mystery of death, weeping and praying, This continuous mourning has taugh t her a few secrets to bear the misery of suffering and death if not champion them. Therefore, when Nora reports that the young priest has told her that