“Riders to the Sea” is a play written by John Millington Synge, who was influenced by Yeats to visit the Aran Islands. Synge can be credited with providing a sort of sense realism to the Abbey Theatre, as plays such as “Cathleen ni Houlihan” were a mere symbolic representation of Ireland itself, while Synge tried to portray what the reality was at his time. Maurya, the protagonist of the play, is the victim of a terrible fate brought by the sea. She is depicted as a typical mother, who lives entirely for the well-being of her family and at the beginning of the play, Maurya had already lost her husband, father-in- law, and was in a deep grieving for her fifth son, Michael, who had been lost for days in the sea. She is aware that her …show more content…
When Bartley tells Cathleen to sell the pig, Maurya answers “How would the like of her get a good price for the pig?” (Harrington, 2009) Once again, Bartley tells Cathleen that “If the west wind holds with the last bit of the moon let you and Nora get up weed enough for another cock for the kelp. It's hard set we'll be from this day with no one in it but one man to work,” (Harrington, 2009) to which Maurya replies “It's hard set we'll be surely the day you're drownd'd with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I an old woman looking for the grave?” (Harrington, 2009) She was unable to stop him, and she knows his fate will turn out true, as she did not give him her blessing: “He's gone now, God spare us, and we'll not see him again. He's gone now, and when the black night is falling I'll have no son left me in the world.” (Harrington, 2009) She tried to reach him in order to give him her blessing but she failed miserably, and upon reaching home she stated that “I seen the fearfulest thing”, (Harrington, 2009) which was seeing Michael riding on the grey pony behind Bartley. She eventually found out that not only was she sure that Michael was dead, but so was Bartley. She resigns herself to the fact that all of the male members of the family are dead, and finds consolation on the fact that the sea can do no …show more content…
Maurya was constantly aware of the threat of the sea, and through the loss of all the male members of her family, she became forever linked with the natural world. She is thus a metaphor for women as a force of nature: her tragedy is about having to stay behind as a female and the consequences of her losses. She is part of a society in which the role of both men and women are already strictly defined and should not be challenged. The loss of a male in a household is catastrophic, as they depend on fishing and only men could do that, and women should only stay at home cooking, taking care of clothes and minding animals. Thus, Maurya fails in not being able to stop her son from going to the sea and is thus also perceived as a metaphor for her inability to act, due to her role as a female. If she were to act and gave her blessing to her son Bartley, perhaps his death could have been avoided. When she was given the power of speech in order to give him her blessing, she failed: “tried to say "God speed you," but something choked the words in my throat. He went by quickly; and, "The blessing of God on you," says he, and I could say nothing.” (Harrington, 2009) At the end of the play, Maurya also appears as the symbol of universal motherhood, as she prays not only for her, nor for her own family, but for all
The extend of most American’s knowledge of early America is of Columbus’ discovery of America for Europe in 1492 and the landing of the Mayflower in Plymouth in 1620. This was true of A Voyage Long and Strange author, Tony Horwitz. Horwitz felt as if there were pieces missing in his picture of early America and set out on a journey that spanned from Canada to the Dominican Republic. The novel starts out with a prologue of Horwitz talking about his own reasons for wanting to learn more of early America and then is broken into three sections Discovery, Conquest, and Settlement. Each section discusses another period in early American history starting with first contact in Vinland and ending with the landing in Plymouth.
It is never easy to cope with a loved one’s death. I could not imagine Mameh’s pain. It must have been extremely difficult and devastating to experience her mother’s death alone. I wish Mameh had a figure to talk or express her emotions to. That weeping symbolizes Mameh’s hopelessness. Ruth would never forget the sound because that is how she perceived her mother, as irremediable.
Ma Joad is a woman of strength and hope who is the backbone of the family. She represents the Mother Nature archetype while she posses the physical aspect of guiding the family and staying strong when the family needs her most. Steinbecks shows the importance of ma's character by the syntax usage to describe ma. " Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work...her ankles, and her strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor", Ma is described with these features to show her strength as a mother who has control and survives through hard situations (95). Her 'bare feet' being close to the earth shows how she takes on a 'Mother Nature' archetype to her character. She is one with the earth just as Mother Nature is. Mother Nature is one that gives birth, produces, sustains life and nurtures her family. All of these archetypes are expressed in ma's character.
“The Boat”, narrated by a Mid-western university professor, Alistar MacLeod, is a short story concerning a family and their different perspectives on freedom vs. tradition. The mother pushes the son to embrace more of a traditional lifestyle by taking over the fathers fishing business, while on the other hand the father pushes the son to live more autonomously in an unconstrained manner. “The Boat” focuses on the father and how his personality influences the son’s choice on how to live and how to make decisions that will ultimately affect his life. In Alistair MacLeod’s, “The Boat”, MacLeod suggest that although dreams and desires give people purpose, the nobility of accepting a life of discontentment out weighs the selfishness of following ones own true desires. In the story, the father is obligated to provide for his family as well as to continue the fishing tradition that was inherited from his own father. The mother emphasizes the boat and it’s significance when she consistently asked the father “ How did things go in the boat today” since tradition was paramount to the mother. H...
This passage defines the character of the narrators’ father as an intelligent man who wants a better life for his children, as well as establishes the narrators’ mothers’ stubbornness and strong opposition to change as key elements of the plot.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
The nurse believes that she may harm the children and foreshadows their actual death. After she hears Medea cursing her sons she tries to sway Medea to more logical train of thoug...
The reading of “The Boat” by Alistair Macleod, and “Simple Recipes” by Madeleine Thein, both display many components that draw attention to different family dynamics, as well as how each member is tested when if comes to love.
This Passage is significant in many ways. O’Brien has a vague yet vivid memory of throwing a grenade and killing a young Vietnamese soldier in the midst of war and what really struck him was the corpse of the young man. He is dejected because of what he has done, and was even speaking in the third person and constructing fantasies as to what the man must have been like before he was killed. Weaving the story of the young man’s life into something similar as his own. The way O’Brien achieves this is through certain literary techniques. One is being Imagery. On the top of page 127 he says “The nose was undamaged. The skin on the right cheek was smooth and fine-grained and hairless. Frail-looking, delicately boned” (O’Brien 127). On the top of page 128 he also says “Along the trail there were small blue flowers shaped like bells. The young man 's head was wrenched sideways, not quite facing the flowers, and even in the shade a single blade of sunlight sparkled against the buckle of his ammunition belt. The left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips. The wounds at his neck had not yet clotted, which made him seem animate even in death, the blood still spreading out across his shirt.” (O’Brien 128). O’Brien uses words like
Ma is presented as a lady who purposely and happily satisfies her part as "the bastion of the family." She is basically the healer of the family 's ills and the mediator of its contentions, and her capacity to perform these errands becomes as the novel advances. Pa Joad is Ma Joad 's spouse and Tom 's dad. Pa Joad is an Oklahoma sharecropper who has been ousted from his homestead. A candid, decent hearted man, Pa guides the push to take the family to California. Once there, not able to discover work and progressively edgy, Pa ends up searching to Ma Joad for quality and initiative, however he some of the time feels embarrassed about his weaker position.
Marjane’s mother was one of the most influential people in her life, her mother taught her to be strong and independent. By introducing her mother through the story of her
Martha’s actions throughout the play can be seen as her attempt to act like a typical American female during 50s and 60s. During this time period, women were expected to have a child and to be good wives. However, Martha doesn’t have children. If a woman didn’t have children, she was ultimately a failure. She says, “I disgust me. I pass my life in crummy, totally pointless infidelities...” Martha thinks herself that she is a failure due to lack of reproduction. Martha created the story of a son because she truly wants a child. She also creates the story because she wants to fit into society. She wants to become a woman that society expects. Because she does not want to society to view her as an inadequate woman, she is tremendously irrational about her illusional son. Martha and George start to create a story of their son with precise details from Martha’s delivery, son’s physical appearance to his experiences at school and summer camp, with some contradictory details. Martha explains that her son is a balance between George’s weakness and her “necessary greater strength.” When George finally ann...
In the 1950’s through the 1960’s women were not respected in there everyday lives, in the job field or in general. They did not have the rights they deserved, so during this time the “women’s movement” began. Women fought for their rights and fought for the self-respect that they thought they deserved. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the character Mama, expresses her feelings of pushing or extracting a new side for a woman. Her role explains that woman can be independent and can live for themselves. Through her behavior in this play she demonstrates that women can support and guide a family. Mama is in charge of the family, which is unusual, since men are traditionally the “head of a family”. Through Mama’s wisdom and dialect she expresses and portrays an image of pro-feminism. Mama’s experience in the play A Raisin in the Sun illustrates the expressions, the emotions, and the feeling with which Mama and women had to cope. She was able to characterize this through her passionate dreams, her control and her strong willed attitude.
Women’s lives are represented by the roles they either choose or have imposed on them. This is evident in the play Medea by Euripides through the characters of Medea and the nurse. During the time period which Medea is set women have very limited social power and no political power at all, although a women’s maternal and domestic power was respected in the privacy of the home, “Our lives depend on how his lordship feels”. The limited power these women were given is different to modern society yet roles are still imposed on women to conform and be a dutiful wife.
...eable quality in a woman is her beauty. In addition, Duffy makes the protagonist annihilate her husband even though in the original myth, Medusa was decapitated, thereby challenging the speculations that a characteristic of women is to be defend less and insubstantial, dating back to ancient times, by showing that women too are vengeful conquerors.