Riders to the Sea : Summary

Summary

Summary in English

We’ll know the summary in only four steps. It’ll be easy to understand the story.

1. The Starting and Finding Michael’s Cloth 
2. Bartley’s Journey to the Galway Fair
3. Being Sure about Michael’s Death by the Cloths
4. Maurya’s Despair and Bartley’s Death

The Starting and Finding Michael’s Cloth: Riders to the Sea is a one-act play. In other words, this play is over with a single act. Early on in Maurya’s kitchen on Aran Island, we see Maurya’s older daughter Cathleen carefully baking a cake, and Maurya’s younger daughter Nora enters with a bundle of clothes. From their conversation, it is understood that the area priest handed the cloth to Nora and asked them to examine it to see if it belonged to their brother Michael. The priest also told them that in a place called Donegal, two sailors saw a body floating in the sea, and they buried the body and gave the clothes to the priest. Before they both check the clothes, they realize that their mother, Maurya, is around them, and they both don’t want Maurya to know anything about it. That’s why they hide these clothes before Maurya enters the house, and it is seen that Maurya enters the house with a sad face. It is essential to know here that Maurya lost her husband, father-in-law, and other children in this sea. Now his other son Michael is also missing at sea. 

Bartley’s Journey to the Galway Fair: At this time, Maurya’s last surviving son Bartley entered the room. Here it appeared that Bartley himself was preparing to go to sea. He would go to Galway Fair, near their village, to sell his two horses. One horse is called Red Mare, and the other is Gray Pony. Bartley wanted to go, but Maurya did not want to let Bartley go because her other son, Michael, was already nowhere to be found at sea. Maurya kept telling Bartley that the weather was terrible and there might be storms at sea, so Bartley shouldn’t go to the fair. But Bartley thought he had to go to the fair because if he couldn’t sell these horses in two fairs, their family would have to face a lot of trouble. So here we get a good sense of Bartley’s responsibility towards his family. Although Maurya forbids Bartley to go again and again, Bartley in no way agrees with his mother and wants to go to the fair at any cost. When Maurya realizes that Bartley can no longer be held back, she says that this may be the last time she sees Bartley. Cathleen scolded her mother a lot after hearing this because, according to the rules of Aran Island, if any of the people there cursed or said anything dangerous at the start of the journey, it would bring bad luck for them. 

Being Sure about Michael’s Death by the Cloths: Cathleen was making a cake, but during an argument with her mother, she forgot to give the cake to her brother Bartley. Later she tells his mother that You take this cake and bless Bartley with the cake. After Maurya leaves, Cathleen and Nora take out the clothes to see if they belong to Michael. So, when they examined the cloth and saw that there was stitching and looked closely at the hem, Nora realized that it belonged to her brother Michael because she had sewn it by hand. Meanwhile, Maurya re-enters the scene, but she cannot give the cake to Bartley. Instead, Maurya came and told her two daughters that when she went to deliver the cake, she saw by the sea that Bartley was riding behind Michael on the Red Mare and Michael was leading the way on the Gray Pony. Because Michael was dead, they broke the news to Maurya. Cathleen and Nora tell Maurya that Michael’s dead body has been found and buried. 

Maurya’s Despair and Bartley’s Death: Since Maurya saw Michael on the beach, it was a supernatural event because Michael was dead at the time. According to Island customs, this event is ominous, indicating that Bartley may die in the future. It was Maurya’s hallucination. When these were told to Maurya, she sat with her hands on her head and began to scream and scream, and from her despair, we saw that her four other sons, her husband, and her father-in-law all perished in this sea. Her two sons, Stephen and Shawn, went to sea one day to fish and never returned. Another of her children, Seamus and Patch, is also missing. (Here, it is very important to remember the names of Maurya’s children as this question appears almost in the exam as a brief.)

Maurya sat like this and kept shouting, and at times, it was seen that the villagers were bringing another body towards their house on the boat. One arrives and tells them that Bartley is dead, and it is Bartley’s body. While the boat is sailing at sea, the Gray Pony kicks Bartley into the sea, and Bartley hits a rock and dies on the spot. The villagers then arranged for Bartley’s body to be buried. At this time, Maurya is seen to be completely petrified with grief. She is heard to say that since her husband and children have all vanished into the ocean, she has no more worries from now on. Maurya accepts her fate because the people of the seashore have no choice.

Finally, she says that no man can live forever, but he must be satisfied. No human can live forever in this world, but we must be satisfied with all these things.

Moral Lesson: “Riders to the Sea” teaches us about the inevitability of death, the power of nature, and the cycle of life and death in the face of harsh rural realities.