Stoicism Is The Foundation Of Modern Civilization In John Millington Synge's 'Riders To The Sea'

This paper attempts to show how stoicism is the foundation of this well- developed civilization. Stoicism makes our life strong enough to face all kinds of challenges posed by either the life or the nature. The whole life is the play of energy. Stoicism blocks the wastage of energy, means wastage of life due to unwanted incidents happening every second in our life. Nature has taught the importance of stoicism to the humanity through experiences in course of journey on this planet since the time immemorial. Existentialism Literary Theory has been applied to show how the heroine of the drama, Maurya is fighting to survive at any rate. Circumstances make our life emotionally disturbed. Emotionally disturbed person starts breaking from inside in all ways into pieces slowly and finally compels the life to reach at the situation of death. Imbalance of emotions is nothing but a kind of slow death. If we become stoic, we can live a peaceful, healthy and prosper life.  After losing her father, father-in-law and six sons one by one, Maurya, the heroine of the drama Riders to the Sea has broken completely but as soon as she comes aware with the truth of life, she immediately correlates herself with the rhythm of nature by thinking about the great universal philosophy that “Boats are not with us but Courage is with us.” By the end of the drama, Maurya’s stoicism is the matter of praiseworthy for her life and to the life of her daughters as well as to the whole humanity for a peaceful, healthy, progressive and dynamic civilization. That is the need of time. That is the beauty of the universe.