Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As a sophomore in high school, I was required to read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I had forgotten that my class was required to read this poem but as I began to read it again so much came back to me. Most people when they have already been required to read something would stop and move to the next thing. However, just as the wedding guest in the story, I was unable to stop reading the story until I had reached the end.

Throughout the poem there is a theme of Christianity and the supernatural. The mariner tells the wedding guest of a skeleton ship with a woman whom is Life-in-Death and her mate Death aboard. The two have been playing dice to decide who will have the ship’s crew and Life-In-Death has one the mariner. One by one the crew begin to die right before the mariner’s eyes and he describes “and every soul, it flew me by, like the whiz of my cross bow!” (331 lines 222-223). The supernatural are seen for a second time as the crew are inspirited on page 334 and again on page 335 the Polar Spirit’s fellow-daemons discuss the mariner while he lies in a trance due to the angelic power causing the ship to travel faster than a human life could endure.

A second theme that is seen in the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is that of destruction and revival. When the mariner shoots the albatross he does so without thinking and it ultimately leads to his ruin. His renewal begins when the mariner begins to understand that all things of nature are to be loved and valued the same. This is evident when he realizes the beauty of the sea snakes and his curse is lifted:

“O happy living things! no tongue their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware! Sure my kind saint to pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The self same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea” (333 lines 282-291).

As mentioned in the podcast, Anna Barbauld said there were two flaws to the story of the ancient mariner, one being that it was unbelievable and the other being that there was not a moral. Coleridge argues that he believes “the poem had too much.” I would have to agree with Coleridge and say that the poem was full of morals. The moral that stands out the most is that a person should reconsider their attitude of the natural world. One most love and cherish all things that God has created no matter how big or small, how ugly or cute, or how wanted or unwanted they are. The last line that the mariner says to the wedding guest supports this very well, “he prayeth best, who loveth best all things both great and small; for the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all” (340-341 lines 614-617). And because the mariner must tell his story over and over to rid himself of agony, more and more people learn from his story and ultimately they too change and become more loving of the natural world around them.

One thing that I find very interesting is that we still use Coleridge’s words from the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” today. On page 330 lines 140-141 read “Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung.” This line has also derived a saying that may not be known to all but is still very common. Many people when dealing with a burden will compare it to the Albatross around their neck. For example if my car was old and broke down on me all the time it would be a very big burden and I could refer to it as the Albatross hanging on my neck.