Maurya and the Perception of Death - Essay Example

Maurya and the perception of Death Introduction Synge, the playwright is the biggest worshipper of nature and the countryside of Ireland pre-dominates his plays. (Hill) The pastoral scenario is the backdrop for his plays. The rustic characters and their fight for survival touch his heart. In this context, his Riders to the Sea has earned an excellent recognition in the world of literature. Maurya like Shakespeare’s King Lear or Oedipus’ Sophocles’ arrives at a comprehensive knowledge of life through suffering. She sees her family consumed by the sea; she herself is almost crushed with sorrow and repeated sorrow. 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 “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 taught 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 the Almighty God cannot be so cruel as to take away the last surviving man, Bartley, Maurya rejects the callous optimism of the young clergyman: “Its’ little the like of him knows of the sea…Bartley, will be lost now”(Synge, 38). Indeed Maurya unerringly anticipates Bartley’s death the moment her youngest son and last male survivor of her family, expresses his resolve to go to Connemara. She has known enough about the ways of the God and of the curse hovering over her to have any doubt about it. Off course, with a mother’s instinct she tries to protect Bartley from the sea, framing excuses why his presence might be necessary. Nevertheless, the young man with his pride of youth and his shortsighted sense of duty, defies the words of his mother and goes to meet the challenge. The apprehension of the mother augments when she forgets to give Bartley the ritual blessings before his departure. Maurya breaks into a disconsolate lament:  “He’s gone now, God spare us, and we will not see him again. He’s gone now, and when the black night is falling, I’ll have no son left in the world” (Synge, 26). Her foreknowledge of Bartley’s destiny, which is powerless to prevent, makes her another Cassandra, the Trojan fortuneteller who was cursed never to find anyone to believe his prophecy. Maurya’s apprehension is further suggested when she sees the “fearfulest thing”. (Synge, 36) She finds Michael, with clothes upon him, riding the gray pony behind Bartley’s gray mare. The symbolic quality of this vision is obvious: the gray pony stands for death and the red mare for life. It means death is chasing life. This vision makes her realize the complete mystery of death. When Bartley’s body is carried into the cottage, we discover a transformed form of Maurya. Her days of sorrow and lamentation have ceased; she can accept the inevitable death with a tension free mind. She says, “They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me”. (Synge; quoted in Hill, 183) It is significant that Maurya puts the empty cup of holy water down. This suggests that she will not require the holy water anymore, that she will not outlive her lost son. At this final hour she goes beyond personal grief and speaks as a representative of mankind: “No man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied” (Synge, 11). This realization is the blatant truth of human life. The main point lies in the way a man should live and the way he must accept death. Therefore, “she’ll be getting her death”. (Synge, 19) Conclusion Synge’s own personal experience, that is, his days spent in the barren landscape of Aran Island and the crude and harsh circumstances under which the rustics led their life imbibed in him the tragedy of Fate. This we call the demolition of human endeavor at the hand of the merciless Fate. Maurya in the end acquires wisdom and detachment, so she can utter words of reconciliation and show compassion towards a doomed humanity. She has become an agent of catharsis. She has transformed from an innocent, poor, tearful, and anxious old mother in a God-Forsaken country to majestic figure who can confront death. The final stage of Maurya’s attitude to life and death is natural consideration the miseries and sufferings he has undergone.   References Hill, Philip, Our Dramatic Heritage Volume 4, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1991. Milton, John, Samson Agonistes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 Synge, John M., Riders to the Sea, London: Quill Pen Classic, 2009 Read More