Summary - rime of the ancient mariner part 1 PDF

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Summary

Rime of the Ancient Mariner Part 1...

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem begins in the setting of a wedding. The Ancient Mariner, an eccentric looking character with a ‘long grey beard’ is introduced in the first stanza with a tale to tell. He transfixes a young wedding guest with his ‘glittering eye’ and it becomes apparent that the mariner is a character with an air of magic and mystery; he seems to have bewitching powers as the guest ‘cannot choose but hear.’ He begins his story by transporting the reader to a fantastical land of ‘mist and snow’ where the ice is ‘green as emerald.’ The mariner’s tale soon becomes tainted with a sense of urgency and excitement as he recalls how he sailed his ship through ‘the snowy clifts’ and the ice that ‘cracked and growled and roared and howled.’ The Albatross can be seen as symbolic of the burden and damnation that the mariner brings upon himself when he shoots the great bird, believing it to be a bad omen. Coleridge’s selected language is noticeably archaic (for example ‘he stoppeth one of three’ and ‘the Mariner hath his will’) and this adds to the feeling the Mariner (one of the poem’s prominent speakers) comes from a place of the past, he seems ageless due to his combination of bright eyes and ‘long grey beard.’ Furthermore this contributes to his otherworldly nature. Coleridge structures his ballad using the narrative technique of the frame tale, in other words, a story within a story. The inner story begins in the third stanza of part one with the line ‘There was a ship, quoth he.’ In the first part of the ballad, there are several references to nature as a force that is far greater than our human understanding. These can be contrasted with the reality that is associated with the outer tale, the frame narrative where the wedding is introduced. Images of ‘The guests are met, the feast is set’ heightens the awesomeness of ‘the storm-blast…tyrannous and strong’ and the ‘wondrous cold.’ These descriptions set the scene of the land in which the Mariner’s tale takes place. Evidently in awe of nature, Coleridge conjures a picture of nature as majestic, fantastic but also terrifying. This is juxtaposed with the ordinary, domestic setting of the wedding, the frame around the spectacle of the natural world that Coleridge’s is describing within the Mariner’s narration. The motif of the Albatross can be read as an allusion to Christianity, with the bird being emblematic of Christ who died for the sins of man. This is alluded to in the line ‘With my cross-bow, I shot the Albatross’ which includes n play on words with the use of cross, referring to the crucifixion. However the Albatross could also be symbolic of nature. The Mariner must repent for shooting the Albatross and for committing an act of such violation against something so great and beautiful. This theme of sin and penitence recurs throughout once it has been established in Part one. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner could be compared to Wordsworth’s Two-part Prelude with regards to the idea of nature as a monumental but relentless force. For example, phrases in Wordsworth’s writing such as ‘the blast which blew’ and ‘perilous ridge’ instil a similar sense of fear that is expressed in Coleridge’s text, the overwhelming feeling of being in the presence of the sublime and something far greater than human kind....