Alijon Rahmatov
Professor Peer
ENG 2850
4 October, 2016
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a poem about a lone sailor who survives disastrous journey. I have to be honest with you Coleridge’s poem was more challenging to read than the other works that we’ve read. Not only because of the language that it was written but also it was packed with interesting symbols and images, which require more time to analyze it. Coleridge’s poem is rich with religious and natural symbolism. I found many references to the Christian religion throughout the poem. One example of religious symbolism is the Albatross. The moment when mariners meet the Albatross, they call it in God’s name as if it was a Christian soul. I believe that the Albatross is a reference to Jesus. Like Jesus in Christianity, here the Albatross was sent to help mariners. However, it was killed be the Mariner which leads to the discussion question: why does the mariner kill the Albatross? “Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung.”(367)It seems to me that the act of killing the bird represents the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And the Mariner here represents people, who have to carry the burden of sins.
On the other hand, I see the Albatross as a symbol of balance in nature which was broken when the Mariner killed it. The nature punishes them by putting a curse on him and killing the rest of his crew. The author depicts the nature as a supernatural with weird creatures. Here even the storm is compared to a huge flying creature that chases their ship.
O happy living things! No tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware. (370)
As we can see the Mariner comes to realize the significance of these creatures only when he was cursed. The author’s message is that we need to respect the natural world and its creations.
Another interesting thing in this poem was at the beginning when the Mariner stops the wedding guest. He stopes only one of the guests but not all three. And the wedding guest couldn’t leave him, “yet he cannot choose but hear” (364). Was he hypnotized by the glittering eyes of the mariner? What is the meaning behind it? There is something special about his eyes. He could hold a guest against his will. Perhaps his eyes has something magical which is a part of his punishment. At the end of the poem the Mariner says, “that moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me” (560). What kind of a man is he looking for? Does it mean that the wedding guest was a chosen one?