Rime of the Ancient Mariner

O.K. Mantz

An unusual, yet mesmeric tale, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” concerns a Mariner who shoots (and kills) an Albatross, which propels him into regret and punishment as well as estrangement from his fellow humans. The poem is heard by the wedding-guest, through whom the reader understands the story, and told through the mouth of the Mariner. Upon spying the “man that must hear” him, the Mariner is ensnared by a “woful agony” that forces him to begin his narrative (lines 589 and 579). The sudden agitation to speak, thus also the fact that the narrative is told by the Mariner himself, provides an  honesty to the story that the narrative would not otherwise possess. When the wild-eyed Mariner arrives and begins, the first-person perspective along with the sorrowful and regretful tone present throughout, the Mariner displays honesty which makes his story (to a certain degree) very believable. However regretful, the mood proves also eerie and rather mysterious, for the entire narrative is flooded with the wild and unknown. The Mariner, suddenly appearing at the wedding, holds the wedding-guest captive with his “glittering eye” and begins his strange tale (line 13). Both the outlandish events described and the tone of the story add to the eerie atmosphere. Ice “as green as emerald” floats by, the mysterious Albatross arrives, and “slimy things” crawl at the hull (lines 54 and 125). Death and Life-in-Death arrive to kill the seamen and curse the Mariner. The simple rhyme (ABCB) directs the focus from the poetic form of the piece and unto the content within the narrative. Through utilizing violent and supernatural imagery—such as the souls of the seamen, the blood to slake their throats, “fog-smoke white” nights—the scenes of the story assume a dark and eerie feel (line 77).

Both the tone and the emotions within the poem undergo a significant alteration. After the Mariner has shot the Albatross and has witnessed the death of his crew, he tries to pray, but finds himself unable and his “heart as dry as dust” (line 247). Up until this point within the narrative, the tone remains eerie and mysterious; yet when he peers into the water and marks the slimy creatures, the “water-snakes,” he is suddenly overcome by a sensation of love and wonder (line 273). He describes their beauty through colour and their coiling movement and then proceeds to bless “them unaware,” at which he finds the Albatross slipping from his neck and regains the power to pray (lines 285-291). The wonder and astonishment produced by nature connects the Mariner with the divine. Coleridge, like Wordsworth, reveals that loving and marvelling at the natural world leads the individual to a wiser and purer form than the mature self, which ultimately leads on to the divine. He “who loveth well both man and bird and beast” also prays well, but rejecting nature removes one from the divine—only when the Mariner realises with wonder what he saw, was he able to pray (lines 612-613). Here the narrative shifts from dark and eerie to portraying hope; the Mariner is not set free from his punishment upon praying, but the Mariner does change his view on the world and the experiences he had, which is a powerful reminder to reflect on nature, with strong emotions (as Wordsworth argued was the aim and intent of poetry) not only for Coleridge and his contemporaries, but also for us in our modern and, in some ways, more unnatural world.

The main image of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the Albatross, which begins as a symbol of good omens and luck, bringing fair winds and fine voyage with it. Yet the Albatross later transforms into a symbol of anguish and regret after the Mariner kills the innocent bird and is forced to wear it around his neck. And when the Mariner’s throat is unslaked, but he wishes to cry out, he bites into his arm and sucks the blood. Here, the Mariner is forced to shed his own blood, just as Judas killed himself after the death of the Christ. In fact, through a religious lense, the Albatross represents Christ, for it dies by the machinations of a crossbow, used by the Mariner who thus likens Judas Iscariot that, “instead of the cross,” must carry the dead Albatross. On another side of the spectrum of criticism, one may read the “Rime” through a psychoanalytic lens. Freud revolutionised psychology with his conception of the unconscious, “dual” mind, the id and the ego (the superego being a mere projection of the ego). Coleridge’s life is filled with possibilities and yet also despair, a contrast starkly reflected in the Mariner’s own life at sea. From fair winds and the view of possibilities set before him, the Mariner continues to fall into a pit of misery and anguish, just as Coleridge’s life turns into something quite bitter. With no degree, a failed scheme of a “pantisocracy,” a miserable marriage, and an addiction to opium, Coleridge translates his life into the life of a seaman who shoots the Albatross without clear intent and thus is forced to realize his shame and live on with his guilt, unable to do else than tell his tale. Perhaps an early Marxist, Coleridge reflects Wordsworth’s view on Nature, but fashions each of the characters within the story at a (somewhat) equal level. The priest is on the same boat as a fisherman and, although the Mariner is a seafarer above a mere fisher, they are all brought together and none, save the Albatross, is better (or worse, for that matter) than the other. First written only four years after, perhaps Coleridge’s failed “pantisocracy” manifested itself in “the Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and produced a duality found not only in nature, but in Coleridge, and therefore in us, the readers, as well. It is the responsibility of each individual to reconcile the natural and the unnatural within, and without, ourselves.