Discussion Topic
What is the name of Maurya's youngest son in Riders to the Sea?
Maurya has had six sons in total. At the beginning of the play, however, four have died and a fifth, Michael, is suspected to be dead. Indeed, the opening stages of the play are largely concerned with whether or not Michael is still alive. A priest reports that a body has washed ashore, which is assumed to be Michael's. Maurya's sixth son, and the youngest, is called Bartley.
Maurya's husband and father-in-law have also died before the play begins, meaning that, with the absence of Michael, Bartley is left as the only man in the house. He takes up the responsibility of financially supporting the family, which includes his mother and also his two sisters, Cathleen and Nora. Later in the play Bartley dies, too, after falling from his horse and drowning in the sea.
Who are Maurya's surviving children at the start of Riders to the Sea?
Synge's tragedy is set in the remote and rugged Aran Islands of the west coast...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
of Ireland. Maurya's surviving children at the opening of the play are Nora, Cathleen, and Bartley. Maurya has eight children, six sons and two daughters, but all the sons except Bartley have been lost at sea.
The play opens with Nora coming home with a bundle of clothes found on a drowned man that washed up in Donegal and is suspected to be Maurya's son, Michael. The daughters are careful to hide this bundle from Maurya, who has already endured so many deaths. Yet Bartley, undeterred by the drownings of all his other brothers, is determined to sail to the mainland with some horses to sell at a fair. Maurya is convinced that Bartley will be drowned as well, and her premonition proves true: he is found drowned by the end of the play, at which point Maurya, having lost all her sons to the sea, says that she has nothing left to fear from the ocean.
The fact that only the female characters are left alive at the end of the play highlights the fatalism at work in the play. There is no recourse on the islands for the men other than to go to sea, just as there is no recourse for the women other than to grieve them when they die. In that sense, the characters are all prisoners, waiting for death to claim them.