Significance of the Title of Riders to the Sea Anonymous College

In the tragic spectacle of Riders to the Sea, John Millington Synge explores an essentially Pagan situation. There is a degree of deliberation in the choice of the title and its application is both literal and metaphorical since it is an extended metaphor meaning “we are all moving toward mortal death”. The title mainly embodies the Biblical allusion: in the book of Exodus there is a mention of how Pharaoh’s horsemen pursued the Israelites to the sea but themselves perished in the process. Miriam, the prophetess, sang the glory of Lord for “the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea”. Obviously Pharaoh’s horsemen, the riders to the sea, were cursed by God and they met their death in the raging waters.

In the play, Maurya may or may not have been cursed by the Lord but there is something ill fated about their journey, a fact that Maurya knows too well. Having lost her husband and her four sons, she tries to prevent her last and youngest son, Bartley from going into the sea despite the young priest assuring her that “Almighty God will not leave her destitute with no son living”. Here the priest himself is seen as a piece of fragile optimism since Maurya’s religious beliefs hasn’t been of much help in the past and thus,...