Conflict of Riders to the Sea?

Answer 1

After Nine days of constant grieving for her missing son, Michael, old

Maurya is fallen into a restless sleep. Her daughter, Cathleen, is busy

with household tasks, when another daughter, Nora, slips quietly into

the kitchen with a bundle given her by the young priest. It contains

part of the clothes taken from the body of a drowned man far in the

north. They have been sent to the family for identification, since the

clothes may belong to her missing brother.

The girls go to open the package but then decide to hide it in case

their mother, who is waking up, should come in and see them crying.

Maurya enters. After the sea had claimed the lives of her husband

and four eldest sons, Maurya tries to discourage Bartley, her last

living son, from going to Connemara to sell a horse, which was the

trip Michael took when he died. But Bartley insists that he will cross

the mainland in spite of winds and high seas.

Mad and aggravated at Bartley for not listening to her pleas, Maurya

allows him to go, however, without her blessing. Cathleen and Nora

persuade their mother to chase Bartley with the food they forgot to

give him and to give him her blessing regardless of her fears. While

she is gone the girls open the package. Nora recognizes her own

stitching in one of the socks, and immediately knows that the owner

of the clothes was indeed her brother, Michael. Their only comfort is

the hope that his body has been given a good Christian burial where

it was washed up.

Maurya returns horrified with a vision she has seen of Michael riding

on the horse behind Bartley. She claims that the vision proves that

her fear of Bartley's death is being realized. When her daughters

show Maurya the clothes her only response is that the boards she

bought for Michael's coffin will serve for Bartley instead.

As Maurya speaks the neighboring women enter keening. The Men

follow shortly, carrying the body of Bartley who has been knocked off

a cliff into the waves by the horse he was intending to sell. The play

closes on the note of Maurya's accepting surrender to the sea, and

to the course of life: "They're all gone now and there isn't anything

mire the sea can do to me… No man at all can be living forever and

we must be satisfied."

Answer 2

Fate is a conflict in John Synge's Riders to the Sea. Another conflict of the story is a mother's longing to protect her son.