Riders Essay

After reading Riders to the Sea in class, more similarities come up between the two plays. I stand by what I said my first post, stating that both the plays are tragedies. This categorization comes from the theme of death set by both plays. Even though each play has a different account of what’s happening (one of the accounts is the men’s account, the other is the women’s), it’s still evident that death creates a sense of loss in both plays. This sense of loss is what accounts for the tragedy aspect in both plays.
Each play consists of one act, however, each play takes a different perspective. In Riders to the Sea, the reader empathizes with the women and how they cope with their men at sea. The sense of tragedy comes from empathizing with the characters in the play, who are obviously distraught and sad with their situations. I felt as though I could put myself as one of the sons that Maurya lost, and I felt as though this made the play easy to relate to. With this being done, I felt it easy to empathize for the mother in the play.
What makes The Sea of Daughin different is that it focuses less on the people and more on the sea. I took this play into account as the men’s perspective. What’s interesting is that even though the sea takes the lives of many and the women hate it for taking their men away, the men seem to not be able to resist the sea. I feel that a strange sense of tragedy comes from the fact that the men are tempted by something so powerful and dangerous. It’s strange to contrast the two plays when one has the women so fearful about the fact their men are going to sea, and the other one has the men realizing that they love going out to sea better than staying on land.