Write a short note on the character of Bartley. Does he seem to invite his own fate in the tragic scheme of the play.
Ans. Bartley is the youngest son Maurya. At the time when the drama opens, he is the sole survivor of her six sons. He is a hard headed, matter-of-fact peasant youth, already inured to the course of life which is too much at the mercy of wind and wave. Not that he in indifferent to the loss of his brother Michael, but he is too sensible of the new charge the whole family on his shoulders to be a leisure to weep and sigh and lament. “It’s hard set we’ll be from this day with no one in it but one man to work.” Being the “one man to work.” he is bent upon going to a fair in Connemara to sell his horses. For, the poor, almost destitute family must be kept going. His business-like direction to Cathleen and Nora for doing things during the days of his, absence speak of his practical outlook on life. He ignores with absolute silence his mother’s plaintive entreaty not to venture out on the sea.
He does so not out of disregard for her he does so because the young must think of life differently from the old, especially from an old woman worn out with age and calamity. “The blessing of God on you,” he cries as he sees his mother on his way to the shore, and passes on. He must avail himself of the only boat that is sailing out for two weeks or more. It is fatality, pure fatality represented by the unsatisfied hunger of the demon, the sea, that is responsible for his tragic end.
The grey pony seems to be in collusion with the sea; it kicks Bartley into the jaws of the sea. He might have escaped death if he had not ventured forth on the occasion, but he would not certainly have grown in our estimation by hiding himself in his cottage in obedience to the superstitious fears of an old woman. There is a simple grandeur of robust manhood in this uncultured peasant youth. His courage and sense of duty raise him to the rank of ‘heroes’ in the humble sphere of life. In this sense his character answers the requirements of conception of old tragic dramas. Shakespearean or Greek.
But his simple heroism cannot be made wholly responsible for his fate. In a manner, he challenges the sea, but not in the spirit of defiance; the turn of circumstances forces upon his manly character a keen sense of duty. The tragic end of Bartley is a conception possible only to a modern dramatist who can rise above all conventions of the traditional conception about a tragic character. With a clear naturalistic conception of life as it is in modern society. particularly among the poor, uncultured ranks, Synge is bold enough to underline the mystery of Fate a dark, sinister force that rules the universe of man-high and low
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