The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Sin, Nature, and Allegory

Overview and Historical Context

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 as part of the poetry collection Lyrical Ballads, it marked the beginning of English Romantic literature. This imaginary tale, centered on the symbolic killing of an albatross, also marked a shift toward modern poetry, changing the direction of English poetry and literature more broadly.

The poem explores the theme of sin and its consequences, drawing attention to the results of violating nature and the psychological impact that violation has on the Mariner's mind. It weaves together symbolism from Greek myth and Christian scripture, and has been widely considered a Christian allegory highlighting the themes of salvation and redemption. Some critics have also suggested that the poem is a self-portrait of Coleridge himself — that there is a link between the Mariner's loneliness and Coleridge's own personal feelings of isolation, as expressed in his letters and journals (Whalley, 1947).

Narrative Summary

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells the story of a sailor who has just returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a wedding guest who is on his way to a wedding ceremony and proceeds to tell him the story of his voyage. The tale begins with the ship leaving port. Despite initial good fortune, a storm drives the vessel toward Antarctica. An albatross appears during the journey and guides the crew out of the icy region. All the crew members praise the bird, but the Mariner shoots it: "with my cross-bow / I shot the albatross" (Keach, 2004). The crew grows furious, claiming the albatross had brought the South Wind that rescued them from the ice. After a time, however, they change their minds when the weather turns warm and the fog lifts.

Soon afterward the ocean thickens and the men suffer from a severe scarcity of water. Some sailors dream that a spirit is following them beneath the ship. This leads the crew to realize they have made a grave mistake by condoning the killing of the albatross. They blame the Mariner for their torments, believing the act provoked the wrath of the spirits now pursuing them. The South Wind that initially led them away from the ice now pushes the ship into remote, hostile waters.

Angry at the Mariner, the crew forces him to wear the dead albatross around his neck as a symbol of the burden he must carry for his crime: "Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung" (Keach, 2004). The ship then encounters a ghostly vessel on which Death and "Night-mare Life-in-Death" — depicted as a pale woman — play dice for the souls of the sailors. Death wins the lives of the crew, while Life-in-Death wins the Mariner's soul. Her name is symbolic: the Mariner will face a fate far worse than death as punishment for killing the albatross.

All the crew members die, but the Mariner lives on, suffering under the curse of the dead sailors' eyes for seven days. His curse is temporarily lifted when he observes the sea creatures in the water. Where he had once cursed them as "slimy things" — "Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / upon the slimy sea" — he now sees them as beautiful 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 partially absolved. The bodies of the sailors, now possessed by good spirits, drag the ship back toward home, where it is swallowed by a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner alive. He is rescued by a hermit, a pilot, and the pilot's boy in a small boat.

As a continuing punishment for killing the albatross, the Mariner is compelled to wander the world, driven by guilt. He tells his story to all he meets, teaching them a moral lesson. After hearing the tale, the wedding guest returns home and wakes the following morning a "sadder and a wiser man."

Setting and Supernatural Elements

The setting of the poem is defined by natural scenery and supernatural elements alike. Coleridge places special emphasis on weather and celestial bodies — the sun, stars, and sky — conveying the unquestionable power of the natural world to impose itself upon humanity. Precise natural details, such as the cracking of ice and the receding shoreline, ground the poem's otherworldly atmosphere in vivid, sensory reality.

After the albatross is killed, the setting shifts decisively toward the supernatural. The wind disappears and the ocean becomes eerily calm. The sun and water change color, and slimy creatures appear on the surface. One section of the poem is dominated by an intense dryness as the sailors suffer from thirst and the ghost vessel appears on the horizon. At this point the wind dies entirely and the sun's heat becomes overwhelming. The supernatural elements are woven together with astrological and natural phenomena: the retribution of the natural world is visited upon the Mariner through the very forces of the environment he wronged.

Bibliography

Fulmer, O'Bryan. "The Ancient Mariner and the Wandering Jew." Studies in Philology 5 (1969): 797–815.

Keach, William, ed. The Complete Poems / Samuel Taylor Coleridge. London: Penguin, 2004. Print.

McGann, Jerome J. The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Print.

Whalley, George. "The Mariner and the Albatross." The University of Toronto Quarterly 16 (1947): 381–98.