Question

The Rime of Ancient Mariner story

Answer 1

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner begins with one of three wedding guests being accosted by the Ancient Mariner and kept from attending the wedding first by the Mariner’s grasp and then by his hypnotic gaze as the Mariner begins to tell the story of his fateful voyage. The Mariner gives no reason for the voyage, saying that they sailed south until they reached the South Pole, where they became icebound and enshrouded in fog. They see and hear nothing but the ice

The ice was here, the ice was there,The ice was all around:It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,Like noises in a swound

Then an albatross flies into view through the fog. Happy to see another living creature, the men aboard the ship treat it “As if it had been a Christian soul” and they hail it “in God’s name.” It circles the ship, accepting the crew’s hospitable offerings of food, and then the ice splits and a wind begins to blow, allowing the ship to move again.

For nine days the bird follows the ship, coming when the men call and occasionally perching on or near the mast. Then, for no reason, the Mariner shoots it with his crossbow. His shipmates’ initial responses are horror and anger. They blame him for killing the creature responsible for the wind that helped free them from the ice and fear that something bad will happen. However, shortly after the bird’s death, the fog clears and the shipmates change their mind, claiming now that the bird was responsible for the fog and saying that the Mariner was right to kill the bird. As soon as they have gone around Cape Horn and entered the Pacific Ocean, the wind stops, and the ship comes to a standstill beneath the blazing sun, now at the other extreme from the earlier cold and ice, though parallel in immobility, as highlighted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s paralleling of word choice and order:

Water, water every where,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, every where,Nor any drop to drink.

The crew now again changes its mind and hangs the dead albatross around the Mariner’s neck. Shortly thereafter the Mariner spots a ship approaching. In initial joy, the desperate Mariner bites his arm and drinks his own blood to get enough moisture in his mouth to announce what he sees. However, as the ship draws closer it occurs to him to wonder how the other ship can be moving when theirs is not. The ghost ship draws close enough to reveal Life-in-Death and Death gambling for the Mariner. Life-in-Death wins the Mariner and Death takes his consolation prize, the two hundred other men on the ship.

A week passes with the Mariner alone with the dead bodies, whose eyes curse him, and guilty but unable to pray. One night as he watches water snakes swimming in the moonlight, he is so struck by their life and beauty that he loves them and blesses them.

Now that he has repented, the journey homeward begins: The albatross drops from his neck, rain begins to fall, and a strange wind begins to blow above the ship, mysteriously moving it along. The Mariner falls into a trance as the ship speeds faster than mortal endurance, driven by the spirit of the South Pole and manned by spirits who assume the bodies of the fallen crew. While in this trance, the Mariner hears two voices discussing his crime/sin, the fact that he will have to continue to do penance, and the manner by which the ship is moving. When he revives from his trance, he again witnesses the curse on him visible in the dead men’s eyes, which prevents him from looking away from them and from praying. Then the spell snaps, “the curse is expiated,” Coleridge explains, and the Mariner feels a gentle breeze just as he spies the familiar landscape of home.


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