The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge

The story
1. An old mariner meets three guests going to a wedding and stops one to tell him a story, this
one fascinated by the old man keeps on listening to him. The Mariner tells of how he and his
crew sailed in, and once they crossed the Equator they were driven by storms to the South
Pole. Through the fog comes an albatross, initially welcomed by the crew as an omen of
good luck, and after the killing of the albatross by the Mariner it becomes an omen of bad
luck.
2. From the death of the albatross a good wind blows towards the Equator but suddenly stops
in a deadly calm and an evil spell is cast upon the ship that sticks on the sea like a picture.
3. The mariners begin dying of thirst, they became so dry that spill blood to spread their lips,
Shan suddenly a ship appears, a ghost ship manned by Death and Life-in-Death (morally
death but physically alive): Death wins the crew whereas Life-in-Death winds the Mariner.
4. The Mariner survives but he is haunted by the dead men's eyes, and begins to feel
compassion for the water snakes moving around the ship under the moonlight and
understands the respect for nature. He blesses the water snakes recognising the superiority
of nature in order to be reconciled with nature (moment of repentance), then a rain purify his
sin ( humanity is purified from the sin).
5. The spell begins to break and the Mariner hears terrible noises and see strange beings such
as spirits who take the form of the mariners and sail the ship at a supernatural speed.
6. The Mariner falls in a trance where he is surrounded by water and overhear two spirits talking
about his sin and expiation.
The sin was the killing of the albatross, creature of nature.
*Cycle of morality plays: sin, repentance, and punishment. Physical punishment: when he bites
his arms, and moral punishment with the possibility of redemption through telling his story
again and again, in order the other people to understand that we should no offend nature.
7. The ship finally reaches the Mariner's native land where a small boat with a hermit comes near,
as he jumps into the boat his ship sinks, and he ask to the hermit to listen to his story , and after it
he finds peace, but he has to do it for ever, because he's compelled to suffer the pain of the first
time and also because he was won by Life-in-Death, and he has to teach people to love and
respect all God's creatures, without damaging them. This lesson hand on to the wedding guest,
who seems struck by the Mariner's tale, learns to respect nature and realise what man is able to
do. The wedding guest has understood man's negative behaviour and his brutality, and also the
consequence so he became aware and conscious of how important is nature for man's life.
Mariner's features:
-glittering eye, hypnotic power
- compelled by a mysterious force to tell his tale for ever
- the albatross is a sacred braid in many religions and seems to be endowed with supernatural
powers
- the poem is full of unearthly creatures such as spirits, angels, sea monsters
- the ship is driven by mysterious forces and peopled by corpses, derived from Medieval
themes like the Ship of Fools (ships which carries men nowhere) and the Dance of Death
(which takes men away from their graves by skeletons, in fact the Death is a skeleton).
- There aren't explanations but a reflections of Mariner's state mind where the external world
becomes a metaphor of his state mind.

Metaphor of the artist-Mariner who leaves the habitual world in search of truth and knowledge
going through a painful experience and finally saved by the power of imagination.
Under the light of the sun bad things happen instead under the light of the moon good things
happen, because sun is the symbol of reason, illuminism and moon is the symbol of feelings,
irrationality and imagination.
Climax: highest emotional point conduced with the killing of the albatross.
Moby Dick: chase of the wale and killing of it, before the crew is against the mariner who kills it
but after mariners agree with the captain. The crew dies and rests only the mariner.
Both animals are white, while Melville links white flour to positive things but also to negative
things like death and ghosts. The coffin instead is used as a raft, symbol of death is seen here as
a symbol of life. Upsidedown