Writing Assignment on

John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea

Preparation

Before you work up your first draft, you should

• have reviewed the general instructions on Writing Assignments.  (Note that this includes familiarizing yourself with the general criteria for evaluating essays and examinations, and that there is a detailed explanation as well as a simple checklist of these criteria.)
• have studied carefully our glossary entry on tragedy, or at least our editor's proposal for defining the term (p. 1214), in light of our discussion in class, if you were present. 
  • [Note:  something went wrong when I saved the file on this, and this morning -- Saturday, 28 Jan -- I was able to recover only the first couple of paragraphs of what had been a summary of the various points we discussed in class on Friday.  I'll do my best to get something posted by Sunday night, but I'm reluctant to promise for sure since we have house guests this weekend. --L.B.]
• have read the play at least three times -- the last couple of times in light of the specific terms of the assignment and the editors' questions on pp. 1224-25.

Of course, there's no sense in doing these in this strict order.  You should be working back and forth between 2 & 3, and you need to look over 1 sometime fairly early as well as at the very end, just before your final revision.  And you should be taking notes and testing out schemes of organizing parts and pieces of your essay while you are doing your reading.

The topic

X.J. Kennedy and Dana Goia suggest (n) that in Riders to the Sea Synge presents a "story of a family that has long struggled with the sea, a dangerous and demanding friend, a relentless enemy."  For the purposes of this assignment, assume that this is so. 

• That takes care of the first several central criteria they insist on as essential to the genre they define (p. 1214) as tragedy:   it is (1) a play (2) that portrays a conflict (3) in which a human being (or human beings) is the protagonist.  (Though each of these criteria is necessary, in their definition, these three taken together are by no means sufficient.)
• It also identifies the antagonist -- in this case, the sea. 

In your essay, explain how the play satisfies, or does not satisfy, the remaining two, more specific, necessary criteria they propose.  That is, point out the various ways in which the play is designed to indicate to the audience that the sea is to be understood as (4) "some superior overwhelming force."  And explain what the various factors are that prompt (5) the spectator not to wish for a happy ending.  Here you might find it useful to explore the issues pointed to in Question 6 on p. 1225.

N:  Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Gioia, Literature:  An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 7th Edition.  New York:  Longman (2000), p. 1215.

  Suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.  Please send them to lyman@ksu.edu .

      This page last updated 18 February 2000.