Peace In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

The Christian belief is that no matter what you do wrong or to what extent, you are always able to be forgiven. As long as you are able to realize and admit to what you've done wrong and are willing to pay for your sins and repent, you will always be forgiven in the eyes of God. In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the mariner is willing to repent. After committing his sins against nature, he comes to realize that it is not to be taken for granted. By realizing and expressing the beauty that nature is, the mariner is granted his forgiveness in return for penance; his telling of this story.

Now the ancient mariner was reprieved from the punishment. He was not hungry or thirsty, and had no more fear or any mourn. Under the help of the Hermit, the ancient mariner returned his home country, reborn as “a sadder and wiser man (ibid: 23).”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it was written in the late 1700s. The poem’s setting starts during a wedding, an old mariner stops one of the wedding guests from going into the party to tell him a story. The mariner’s story takes place in a ship where he killed an albatross and everything started to go wrong for him and his crew. When the mariner’s story is ending he says that he has a pain to tell people about his story, this is why he stopped the wedding guest to tell him his story. The wedding guest decides not to go to the party because he became upset, he is now a “sadder” but “wiser” man. Coleridge uses many literary elements to make the story come together such as similes, personification, symbolism

The poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a truly imaginative work utilizing the familiar yet timeless themes of good fortune, the power of Mother Nature, and adventurous voyages over the sea. The Mariner relates the bone-chilling tale of his adventure to a guest at a wedding in his native country. Although the guest succumbs to the Mariner’s tale, he is eager to get to the wedding, which is about to start. Coleridge chose this occasion for the poem as a form of irony, by providing a stark contrast between the two atmospheres and situations in his poem. The moods of weddings are usually joyful and jubilant, emphasizing love and the union between

By killing the albatross, the Mariner sets in motion Christianity’s idea that all except Jesus are sinners, but through repentance one can seek forgiveness and ultimately salvation. However, Coleridge poses a dichotomy regarding the transparency of forgiveness in this ballad. After the Mariner blesses the snakes, the reader presumes the curse was lifted and forgiveness was granted. Although the “Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea” (288-91), the Mariner was compelled to serve a long-term penance of continually repeating his tale, also serving as a constant reminder of his sin. Where as Christianity teaches that by repenting one achieves forgiveness, Coleridge enacts the idea of retribution in order for the Mariner to ultimately attain God’s forgiveness. For example, one of nature’s punishments taunts the Mariner with extreme thirst, causing him to cry out:

In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, it has similarities to Frankenstein with structure. In Frankenstein, through careful reading, it is shown how The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has influenced Mary Shelley’s novel. The structure of both the novel and the poem are situated similarly. As well as the end of the novel is similar to the poem. The structure of Frankenstein is laid out to follow The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Also the poem has significance to each character in the novel, Walton his love for exploration and voyaging. For Victor it is his ambitions and wisdom. For the Creature, it is his wisdom as well and telling of his tale. The poem gives the reader a better understanding of the creature and allows the reader to see where the

In the 1798 and the 1817 text of the, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, There are certain changes. Changes that effect the poem and the way that the reader sees the poem. Some of these changes include reading devices called glosses. There are many reasons for the glosses to be put into the poem. One of the reasons is to help the reader interpret lines in the poem that can be confusing. These glosses are a brief interpretation of the stanza, so that the reader will understand it the way that Coleridge intended them to. An example of this is:

It’s easy to tell that the ocean is a mysterious and isolating place from all of the tragic tales we hear from sailors both real and fictional. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and an anonymous author’s “The Seafarer” are quite similar in that they both revolve around said tragic tales told by sailors. However, there seem to be more commonalities between their themes, tones, and messages rather than their seaward-bound settings. But before we can discuss these similar settings and deeper themes, we have to tackle their origins.

The definition of an epic figure according to dictionary.com is, “a brave and noble character in an epic poem, admired for great achievements or affected by grand events”, the best character that portrays these traits is the Mariner.

It is only when the Mariner began to bless all living things and saw beyond his own self that the Albatross fell off. He then felt a connection with nature and God, for Heaven sent down rain that refreshed the ancient Mariner and angelic spirits led him onward. He needed to change and become penitent before he could be rid of the guilt. In repenting, he was given a penance of life: whenever his heart burns within him, he must tell his tale to those who are meant to hear it.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Coleridge writes of a sailor bringing a tale to life as he speaks to a wedding guest. An ancient Mariner tells of his brutal journey through the Pacific Ocean to the South Pole. Coleridge suffers from loneliness, because of his lifelong need for love and livelihood; similarly, during the Mariner’s tale, his loneliness shows when he becomes alone at sea, because of the loss of his crew. Having a disastrous dependence to opium and laudanum, Coleridge, in partnership with Wordsworth, writes this complicated, difficult to understand, yet appealing poem, which becomes the first poem in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads. The Mariner’s frame of mind flip-flops throughout the literary ballad, a

He illustrates his belief that he does not need the good luck of the Albatross. He decides to severe his bonds with the universal cycle of life and love. Following the execution of the Albatross, the Mariner’s luck suddenly changes. He experiences the punishment that comes with the moral error of killing the Albatross. The punishment is isolation and alienation from everything but himself. Thereafter, the "Nightmare," the life in death, kills his crew. He is lost at sea, left alone in the night to suffer, and he has detached from his natural cycle. The Mariner proclaims his misery when he says, "Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! / And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony". To the Mariner, nature has become foreign. The execution of the Albatross causes physical and spiritual decay.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a complex tale of an old seafarer, was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in 1798. According to the Longman Anthology of British Literature, the work first appeared in “Lyrical Ballads”, a publication co-authored with William Wordsworth (557). The ancient mariner’s journey provides for such a supernatural tale, that all who must hear it, specifically the wedding guest in the poem, are enthralled. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the mariner’s tale is the obvious themes of sin and redemption. By using the story-within-a-story method, Coleridge gives the audience a tale that resembles a very Christian-like voyage from one theme, sin, to the final theme, redemption. Throughout his poem,

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a parable of a seaman's crime against nature (pointlessly killing an albatross) and his repentance by blessing the lowly water-snakes.  Setting the poem in the Middle Ages in the then-unknown seas near Antarctica, the poet is able to make his narrative credible and give the reader what is called 'the willing suspension of disbelief.'  "

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as a product of its culturally inscribed author, presents a confused Unitarian world view consistent with that of the Romantic Movement of its time. It attempts to exemplify this view within an unpredictable and often mysterious universe, and by rebuking the hegemonic ideologies held by the text’s cultural antagonists, seeks to grant the awareness of an often unreasonable world populated by its reader’s passionate persona.