Symbolism In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

As the ghost ship nears, a spell is cast upon the ship and all of the mariner's young crew fall dead. The mariner is able to see the souls of his crew leave their bodies and it is at this point which he begins to feel remorse and guilt. "and every soul, it passed me by, like the wiz of my cross-bow!" (Coleridge 222). the mariner now knows that it was his actions that caused this and must take accountability for what he has done. Coleridge's use of the word "bow" in this quote is very important. It shows that now he does feel remorse for killing the bird because he feels it was as if his own bow killed those men. As the mariner begins to accept all f this information, he begins to realize that this is not his home. This is the home of nature and because he is a guest on these waters, he should appreciate it. "the many men, so beautiful! And they all dead and lie: and a thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I." (Coleridge 236). Now that the mariner has taken responsibility for his actions, he looks to God for forgiveness. Through prayer, he tries to ask for forgiveness but knows that in order to reach it, he must first repent. "I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; but or ever a prayer had gusht, a wicked whisper came, and made my heart dry as dust." (Coleridge 244).

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

Throughout the poem, the albatross serves as a symbol for both good fortune and sin. While the albatross was still alive, it represented good luck that caused a breeze to blow the ship from the icy South Pole towards the Equator. However, in its death by the hands of the Mariner, the albatross is a testament of the Mariner’s sin, and by hanging around the Mariner’s neck, it symbolizes a hovering curse.

Throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” there are many instances where metacognitive thinking and knowledge are discussed and presented. The word metacognition comes from the root word "meta" which means beyond. The word metacognition can take many forms including knowledge and when or how to use certain strategies to learn or be used to solve problems. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein we see metacognitive thinking throughout mainly through victor and the creature. Both characters are seen very much throughout the story and through these characters we get a great sense of their metacognitive thinking, successfully in ways but for the main part we see these characters as failed metacognitive thinkers. In

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:

Cleary seen in the quotation above, the curse resulting in the murder of Albatross left the Mariner viewing death as the only possible option to relieve himself of the haunting, tragic images that left his crew dead. Under the moonlit sky as the Mariner’s ship still sails cursed, but then he witnesses something that changes his perception of God and his faith.

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.

It is this admission of guilt that allows the process of forgiveness for the Mariner to begin. It also allows the Albatross to become a reminder of the Mariner's sin, a representation of Christ's suffering, and a symbol of the Christian cross. In lines 40 and 41 it says, "Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung."

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

For reasons not specifically mentioned in the text, the mariner kills the albatross, which can be easily related to a couple of infamous Christian sins.

The lines that follow deal with death and punishment.  Part 3, describes how the sailors' "throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood!  I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! A sail! "  Then all the shipmates die "Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one."  And so the ancient mariner was "Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea!  A never a saint took pity on My soul in agony."  He sat

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.

Four varying viewpoints exist concerning what or who the mariner represents, the first being the superficial idea that he is simply the wise old man who imparts wisdom to the younger generations (Williams 1116). Going beyond the literal connotation, the most common and supported argument it that the mariner represents the Christian sinner. The diction chosen by Coleridge often alludes to Christianity, examples include “Christian soul”, ”God’s name”, “[i]nstead of the cross…about my neck was hung”, and “Dear Lord in Heaven” (Coleridge 1616-1632). Howard Creed believes that the mariner is symbolically a poet, due to the fact that he learns “the great truth about the world they live in” and then attempts to communicate it to others through the art of a story (221). The final possibility is that the mariner represents a mother. Repeated connection to conventionally female things like the sea, motherhood, spontaneity/irrationality, and nature begins to support this conclusion. The role of instructing the young, in this case the wedding guest whom “listens like a three years’ child” is also traditionally female, further developing the argument (Coleridge 1616). Overall, the poem is an exemplar at employing Coleridge’s idea of symbol to use the ordinary to show the transcendent, especially Christianity, yielding that the second option is the preeminent choice.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge based his narrative poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” around the sanctity of nature, especially that of the albatross, a large sea bird who was a sign of good luck to the sailors aboard the mariner’s ship. After the ancient mariner inhospitably kills their good omen, everything starts to fall apart. The mariner eventually is trapped in a solitary, never-ending penance, telling certain people his story. The people he tells however, do not appreciate the story because it points out their lack of spirituality, especially in the case of the wedding-guest. Coleridge, like Blake in “The Lamb,” relates animals and nature to Godliness.

With the formation of a “rare device”, symbolizing his masterpiece of poetry, Coleridge acknowledges that poetry forms through the combination of nature and human perception. In the end, Coleridge demands the readers to “beware” (49, p.1634) of the power of the inspired poet, who recreates his own “sunny dome” (47, p.1634) in the protection of a “circle round him thrice” (51, p.1634). The energy from nature is eventually transferred to the poet, the poet to use his imagination to create his own “Paradise” (54, p.1634), which resembles Xanadu of Kubla Khan. Through the metaphors developing in the poem, Coleridge pieces together the process a Romantic poet creates a poem from the inspiration of a nature scene.