Rime of Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Is this Rime a primarily a religious allegory? A green parable? Or is it some amalgamation that escapes a straightforward reading? Write a paper offering your reading.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest poem written by poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was written in 1797-98 and was subsequently published in 1798 with a collection of poems known as Lyrical Ballads. This poem, along with the other poems in Lyrical Ballads marked the beginning of the English romantic literature and this imaginary tale highlights the symbolic killing of the albatross. It also marked the shift to the modern poetry changing the direction of the English poetry and literature.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner gives an account of the story of a sailor who has just returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a wedding guest who was on his way to a wedding ceremony. The Mariner then tells the story to the guest and begins with his ship leaving on its voyage. Despite the initial good luck, the ship is driven off to Antarctica by a storm. An albatross appears during the journey and takes them out of the Antarctica. The albatross is praised by all the members of the ship's crew but the Mariner shoots the bird, mentioned in the poem as "with my cross-bow / I shot the albatross." (Keach, 2004) The crew gets angry with the Mariner for killing the bird claiming that albatross was responsible for bringing forth the South Wind that dragged them out of the Antarctic. However, after a while, the crew members forget this act and change their mind when the weather turns warm and the fog disappears. But after a while the oceans gets thickened and the men suffers from the scarcity of water. Some sailors also dreamt that a spirit is also following them beneath the ship. This made the sailors realize that they have made grave mistake while supporting the crime of killing the albatross. They blamed the Mariner for their condition as according to them, it incited the anger and the wrath of the spirits who then follow the ship. The South wind that initially leads them away from ice now pushes the ship into remote waters.
The challenges faced by the sailors forced them to change their mind and they blame Mariner for the torments they suffer. Angry at the act of Mariner, they force the Mariner to wear the dead albatross around his neck perhaps to demonstrates the burden that he must carry out because of killing the albatros ("Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung") (Keach, 2004). Eventually, the ship confronts a ghostly vessel. On board of this ship, there are Death and "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (in the form of a pale woman) who plays dice for the souls of the sailors. Through rolling the dice, Death captures the lives of the sailors and Life in Death wins the life of the Mariner. Her name is symbolic in this poem as it seems that Mariner will face a far worse fate than death as a punishment for killing the albatross.
Eventually all the crew members die but the Mariner lives on also suffering from the curse in the eyes of the sailor's corpses for seven days. The Mariner's curse gets lifted temporarily when he sees the sea creatures in the water. Initially the Mariner had cursed these creatures as slimy things" ("Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / upon the slimy sea") but now he sees them as beautiful things and blesses them ("a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware") (Keach, 2004). As the Mariner bends to pray, the dead albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is somewhat absolved. The bodies of the sailors who are possessed by good spirits and drag the ship back home where the ship is drowned into a whirlpool leaving only Mariner alive. The Mariner is then saved by a hermit aided by pilot and pilot's boy in a boat. As a punishment of killing the albatross, the Mariner is forced to wander around the world driven by the sense of guilt. He tells story to everyone he meets and teaches them a lesson. Similarly, after telling his story to the Wedding guest, the Mariner leaves and the guest go back to his house, waking up the next morning as a "sadder and a wise man."
The Rime of Ancient Mariner is the outcome of the wild imagination of Coleridge. This poem explores the
Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is much revered in Western poetical tradition, and it has survived despite the fickle reading audience's drastic turn towards the novel and other forms. Poems were once the acknowledged leader as a written form, but they have long been secondary, or even tertiary, because a novel is said to be easier to
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Specifically, it will answer the questions: Assuming that the psychological-spiritual level of the crew is at least to this point grounded in actual literal experience with nature, given their "ice-olation," why would the crew intuitively compare the bird perching on their ship to a "Christian soul?" Why would someone want to kill it? Why does the weather change after they
Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner consist of many different styles and poetic devices. Many have said that the poem itself is an allegory or a repetition. Prior to going into the details of the poetry and writing style used in the poetry, a brief summary of the poem is discussed. This poem starts off as a story of three young
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Also, after realizing that the killing of the albatross was crime, the Mariner is forced to roam the seas "upon the rotting deck" of the ship where the "dead men lay" (Part IV, lines 19-20). This description is very symbolic, for it means that the Mariner and his crew mates are all doomed to roam the seas as dead men because of the Mariner's killing of the albatross. Although Coleridge's
Your answer should be at least five sentences long. The Legend of Arthur Lesson 1 Journal Entry # 9 of 16 Journal Exercise 1.7A: Honor and Loyalty 1. Consider how Arthur's actions and personality agree with or challenge your definition of honor. Write a few sentences comparing your definition (from Journal 1.6A) with Arthur's actions and personality. 2. Write a brief paragraph explaining the importance or unimportance of loyalty in being honorable. Lesson 1 Journal
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