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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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Aaron
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Jun 17, 2014 03:14PM
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I enjoy considering the merit of the punishment of the Mariner at times, for it seems to me that if one doesn't pay penance for their sins on a regular basis they perchance may fall back in to them once again. His particular penance is interesting because he chooses the person who seems to need to hear about his tale. How he chooses we are never told but one may suppose that it is almost like a mystical connection or like two magnets attracting one another. In a sense he becomes like a harbinger of warning for that individual to straighten up his act.
I also have always liked that his saving grace was the fact that he unwittingly blessed the creatures of the sea. How many times have you found yourself utterly devastated by some situation come upon a momentarily beautiful moment that nature presents to you or just the random appearance of an animal which quite unwittingly you find yourself proclaiming how beautiful it was? Perhaps at these very moments in your life, as in my own, we were saved from utter destruction just as the Mariner is in the poem. Who knows? These are things that I often think about after reading this poem.
I love, love, love this story. I have a board on pintrest that is flavored water and it's name is water, water everywhere. I don't think anyone gets it. no one has commented on the name yet. lol oh well :(
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Lol thanks Aaron! I doubt most ppl get it.
This was my first time reading the poem. It struck me as a great ghost story at sea. I particularly enjoyed the imagery of the ship of dead corpses sinking into the sea through a whirlpool and the hermit watching in horror with the mariner. I’m not sure I find the moral of the story to be as striking as the tale itself. The moral being, “have respect for God’s creatures great and small”, seems arbitrary next to the foreshadowing of the death of the albatross bringing destruction. The albatross is symbolic of upcoming doom. It only made sense for the mariner to be rid of it. The mariner must wait seven days with the dead crew before any relief is given to him. Obviously Coleridge found the number seven to be significant. What I enjoyed was the fact that he dared to conjoin the Biblical and paranormal in a time where it was frowned upon to do so. The mariner ends his days wandering the earth to tell his tale and warn others not to make the same mistake he did. Seems perhaps this Albatross must have been a metaphor for something else. That’s a lot of penance for killing a bird. I hate birds.
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo..."
Very interesting article Roisin thanks for sharing it :-)
