In an example of dramatic irony, Nora and Cathleen (and readers) are aware from the beginning of the play that Michael has most likely drowned, but his mother Maurya is not. When the two girls receive a bundle of clothing from the young priest—who tells them that they were found on a dead man off the coast of mainland Ireland and could be Michael’s—they decide to hide it from their mother. When Nora asks if they should open it, Cathleen responds:
Give me the ladder, and I’ll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won’t know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she’ll be going down to see would he be floating from the east.
This passage hints at the dramatic irony that is present through the rest of the play—Maurya still has hope that Michael could be “floating from the east” and return home to the family, while Nora and Cathleen are aware that the evidence of Michael’s death is sitting in the turf-loft (where turf—or Irish peat—is stored as a source of fuel for their home).
The irony increases after Nora and Cathleen open the bundle to discover that the clothing remnants are, in fact, Michael’s, and again decide to hide this fact from their mother. It’s only after Maurya accepts the fact that Michael is dead that Nora and Cathleen tell her about his clothes.
