Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey Essay

Furthermore, the Mariner’s imprisonment is symbolized by ships. The sailor’s adventure is set about on a ship with one another’s merry company. Unfortunately, control over their ship is lost just as their luck. It quickly becomes a private prison for the Mariner following the sailors’ pitiful deaths. Ghost ships, Death and Life in Death, are seen arriving, playing a game of dice. This seals the Mariner and fellow sailor’s fate. The Mariner imprisons others by compelling them to listen to his story. “And he stoppeth one of three. –By the long grey beard and glittering eye, now wherefore stoppest thou me?” (Part 1, Stanza

In the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduces an elderly sailor, whom of which is also referred to as the Ancient Mariner. In the poem, the Mariner narrates his tale of sorrow to a wedding guest. The story consists of the mariner setting out at sea with two hundred men. They come across an albatross, which is viewed as good luck, and the Mariner shoots it dead. In the event of his spiteful actions, he and his crew are haunted by Biblical allusions; all of which is created to further deepen the meaning of the poem.

The mariner and the crew become cursed and are ‘punished’ by God. The Ancient Mariner suffers punishment both mentally and physically for killing the Albatross. The Mariner's is punished directly by the spiritual and natural world for his crime. Physical punishment includes the deprivation of food and water, and the heat of the sun. "Water, water, every where, and not a drop to drink…Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down...

This experience is one of leaving the known and exploring the unknown, gives the Marinere access to the sublime (I. 27-28). Taking this journey is what aids the Marinere in learning this structure of crime, punishment, and redemption. It gives him the appreciation he holds for all beings, “He prayeth well who loveth well/ Both man and bird and beast” (VII. 645-646). The following line is given immediately after to ensure the reader latches onto the importance of the moral. “He prayeth best who loveth best/ All things both great and small:” (VII. 647-648). This outlook is not possible before because the Marinere has nothing to put these ideas into context; however, his experience of dropping below the known, gives him access to the sublime.

As for the Mariner’s fate and salvation, his obligation to warn people with his story can be linked to the Catholic doctrines of penance and purgatory, where the Mariner must atone for his sins before he can enter heaven. In addition to the poem’s parallelism with the fall of man, Coleridge indicates Christian beliefs through the Mariner’s expressions. After he is adorned with the dead albatross, the Mariner implies that he is a Christian with mention of a cross, saying, “What evil looks had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung”. When the Mariner says “instead of the cross”, it is suggested to the reader that normally he would be wearing a cross on his neck, an obvious Christian symbol.

Similarly, the Marinere gains partial forgiveness when he expresses love towards the sea snakes in his description of their beauty, and the prayer he says for them (IV. 275-279). The Marinere struggles with the love aspect of this pattern of justice as he struggles with viewing the sea snakes, he has no true regard for them and does not possess the ability to view them in a positive way. This reveals itself in his early view of the sea snakes, “And a million million slimy things,” (IV. 230). Additionally, his shooting of the Albatross is an indicator that the Marinere lacks love and respect for creatures and other humans prior to the anguish he faces after shooting the Albatross (I. 79-80). Supporting evidence for this is in the Marinere’s

Now begins the last three stanzas of Part 3. In them, a bad omen appears as a “star-dogged moon” (Coleridge 449)-- a crescent moon with a bright star right near is a bad sailing omen. After the mates see this omen, they look and curse the Mariner. Then, Death takes all the mates’ lives. After this, their souls fly away: the Mariner is alone upon the ship.

The Rime of The Ancient Mariner is about a man, the Mariner, going from place to place telling his tale; how he comes to love and care for all things that God has graced with life through all his hardships at sea. His hardships and punishments only begin once the Mariner strikes down an albatross with his crossbow. From then on he is lost at sea with his lifeless crew as his only company. To a passer’s eye, his punishment seems a little harsh for killing a simple bird. However, it was not only a creature the Mariner had killed by his own hand, but everything it symbolized.

     Later, it discusses a very old superstition that many may not be familiar with--the legend of the Moon as guardian of the dead, and keeper of the souls that have passed on. More than once, it is alluded to that the Moon is keeping the sailors’ souls safe, and that the Moon is holding them captive where they lie, as well. Once it even mentions that the Ancient Mariner sees the cold and pale unfeeling light of the moon reflected in the dead men’s cold black unfeeling eyes. Is it a coincidence that the images stirred up are extraordinarily

The Mariner at one point in the poem prays, as Coleridge puts it in lines 288-291, “The selfsame moment I could pray; and from my neck so free the albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea.” The weight that he bore was lifted from his shoulders and he felt better about what had happened. Perhaps this is also a bible reference due to the fact that it says in Acts 3:19, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord”. Once the Mariner is eventually rescued he also confesses to the

He shows no regret or shame as it falls out of the sky, along with no explanation for his disgusting doing. The Mariner continues to tell his story as if he hadn’t known what horrible thing he had done. Later the spirit of the Albatross would come back and avenge its death by cursing the mariner and his crew. After all his crew members have died is when he starts to appear sorrowful and begins to pray not for help, but for God to take him also. At this point of the story, the fate of the mariner lies in the hands of the spirits. Miraculously, he makes it back to his home country and is acknowledged by a Hermit who helps him with his

The mariner finds himself trying to understand the crime he has committed by killing the albatross as well as the consequences he now must undertake because of

The Marinere tells his "tale" to the wedding-guest, and the reader can assume that he will continue on until he finds another soul to somber with his melancholy tale. Coleridge is again breaking down the norms of traditional religious thought. The reader, an 18th century common man, would assume that after the strange way in which the Marinere accomplished the removal of the Albatross from his neck that the Marinere's life would resume and that his penance endured. Yet, Coleridge does not allow this norm to occur. The act of leaving the Marinere in perpetual penance shocks the reader, and ultimately diminishes the reader's hope in religion.

"Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" is about how we change over time and the realization of it. The speaker in this compares the person he used to be and the person he became. The speaker, remembers almost every detail from the past of Tintern Abbey that he used to visit. Wordsworth uses imagination by describing everything the speaker remembers what he saw and heard. From the sound of the "mountain-springs" (3), "this dark sycamore" (10), and the "hedge rows" (14). These memories make him realize he has been cooped up in the city. The speaker claims these memories kept him sane while living in "the din/ Of towns and cities" (25-26).

In the text Mariner, it helps understand the effect that nature truly has on man, and how nature will forever be stronger and more powerful than man. Not only does the physical aspects not nature affect what goes on in the story Mariner, but the spiritual plays a huge part as well. In the article “Man vs Nature” by John Stossel, it connects to Mariner by explaining that there will always be conflicts between man versus nature. But in reality nature will always be the one that lives. If they would have not been affected by the Mariner shooting the albatross, then they most likely would have never became imprisoned, nor would they have been so affected by nature