I suppose one way of beginning to answer this question is
to focus on the emotion that there is in drama as opposed to other forms of literature.
There is something about seeing characters in front of you and how they respond to
tragedies that allows us to connect with drama in a way that we are not necessarily able
to do with prose or poetry. Aristotle refered to this as "catharsis," which he said was
a purifying of the emotions through watching drama (in his case
tragedy.)
With reference to this excellent play, there is
something about watching the heartbroken Maurya acknowledge the death of all of her sons
thanks to the sea at the end that resonates with our sensibilities. We see her left
alone, insecure and solitary, broken by grief, and yet also we see that in a sense now
she is freed from the sea's dominion over her life. Note what she
says:
They're
all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me... I'll have no call
now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear
the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two
noises, and they hitting one on the
other.
Paradoxically, Maurya,
in her grief at the death of her final son and her discovery about the death of her
other son at sea, is liberated. Her words thus speak of an immense, age-old sadness of a
woman who has lost her child, but at the same time of the way in which the terror that
the sea had over her is now no longer binding. The emotional intensity of such lines is
what makes drama unique and distinct as we see enacted before us the experience of
bereavement.
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