Name:
Date:
period:
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Background reading
Who is Samuel Taylor Coleridge?
What is a poet to this writer?
What is a ballad?
Part I
1. What do the mariner’s “long grey beard” and “glittering eye” suggest about the main character?
2. Identify examples of onomatopoeia in lines 60-65.
3. Want might the albatross symbolize?
4. Summarize the plot of Part I.
Part II
5. In lines 83-106, what kind of relationship does the poem depict between human beings and nature?
The wandering albatross, native to the Antarctic, is the largest seabird in the world. The albatross is remarkably docile-a young bird will often allow itself to be
handled by humans. Their large wingspan allows them to soar effortlessly and at high speeds. Modern satellite tracking has shown that the albatross can fly at
about 18 mph for days at a time and have been known to circumnavigate the globe several times during its lifetime, although it prefers to stay in the Southern
Hemisphere.
6. Looking at lines 115-126, identify 2 examples of repetition and how it contributes to the mood of the scene
Example of repetition:
Mood it creates:
1.
2.
7. How is the albatross symbolized in Part II of the text? Why is it hung around the mariner’s neck?
Part III
8. Beginning at line 171, what is the crew’s reaction to the approaching ship?
9. Who is the allegorical character in lines 190-194? What are they doing?
10. A ballad often focuses on a single event of importance. What is this ballad centered around?
What does the simile in lines 220-223 compare?
11. Summarize Part III.
Part IV
12. In Romantic poetry, the speaker often strongly identifies with nature or sees himself in nature. What is being compared in
lines 226-227?
13. Why do the wedding guests fear the mariner?
14. Focusing on lines 267-281, identify 2 images that appeal to the senses and what senses they appeal to?
15. What do you think the water-snakes symbolize?
16. In the last 2 stanzas of part IV, explain the relationship between these stanzas and earlier significant events in the story.
Part V
17. Literary ballads often contain supernatural events and/or characters. What 2 supernatural events occur on pages 756-757?
What do these events prove?
18. What is the ship compared to? What is the effect?
Part VI
19. Like many prose narratives, this narrative poem contains dialogue. What information is revealed in this dialogue between
two voices?
20. In line 416, what is the “great bright eye” of the ocean? What is Coleridge implying?
21. Paraphrase the extended simile in lines 444-451.
22. Do you consider the Hermit and the Pilot to be reliable narrators? Explain.
Part VII
23. Why does the Pilot shriek, the Hermit pray and the Pilot’s son go crazy?
24. What does the mariner ask the Hermit to do?
25. What is the mariner compelled to do? Why is the wedding guest described as “saddened” and a “wiser” man?
Since many British romantic poets were revolutionaries or dissidents, they often felt like exiles in their own land, and thus this theme is popular among these
poets. One biblical exile story often alluded to was ______________________________.