The Ancient Mariner

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is an early Romantic-era work that was first published in 1798. It is a tale told to a detained wedding guest by an unnaturally old sailor regarding his voyage to the Antarctic. His account of supernatural entities and an eerie natural setting are more than enough to keep the wedding guest's attention while also firmly cementing the place of this lengthy frame narrative as one of the most influential poems of its time. There are also several thematic elements that are open for interpretation, and the overall interpretation that seems the most easily understood is an allegory of Christian faith. These elements include the mariner himself, the albatross, the entities below…show more content…
In this poem, the albatross is portrayed as a type of curse. Initially, the albatross is merely viewed as a bird of good omen. The sailors regarded it with favor, and “As if it had been a Christian soul / We hailed it in God’s name” (part 1, stanza 16). At first, the albatross flew with the ship, and with it came smooth winds and sea. Eventually, however, the young and impulsive mariner and the other sailors on board the ship all agree that the bird should be killed (part 2, stanzas 23-24), and the mariner does so with his crossbow. This turns out to be a grave mistake, as very suddenly the wind and sea become still and stagnant, and many things begin to go wrong, from loss of drinkable water to encounters with malevolent, supernatural beings. The sailors blame the mariner for this turn of events, despite the fact that they all agreed to it, and they hung the albatross around the mariner's neck as a symbol of his…show more content…
This vessel of theirs has the description of a ghost ship, from the "gossamers", or cobweb sails, to its masts that seemed to imprison the sun (part 3, stanza 42). Death is personified as a man, and Life-in-Death is described as a beautiful yet disturbing woman with golden hair and diseased skin (part 3, stanzas 44-46). Life-in-Death and Death play a dice game as they gamble for the mariner's life. This represents the carelessness and control death has over all human lives, and souls. This could also be representative of the human soul being in a tug-of-war state between good and evil, but these descriptions could also be showing the random yet meaningful turns that life can take. Life can end at any moment, and so it is best to be on good spiritual terms at all
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