“The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”
by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Associated Literary Terms
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Frame narrative
Alliteration
Imagery
Onomatopoeia
Archaisms
Seven Parts
Part I
Part I: The Wedding guest, the
voyage, stuck in ice, he kills
the albatross.
The Mariner stops a wedding guest and forces
him, spellbound, to listen to his story.
The ship sails south to equator.
Wedding guest hears music of wedding
beginning.
A storm hits the ship and impels it south. They
are stuck in ice.
An albatross appears and is befriended by the
shipmates. A south wind springs up and takes
them northward.
The Mariner kills it with his crossbow.
Part II
Part II: They suffer punishment
for his crime and are becalmed.
The crew at first cry out against him, but then
commend him when the fog clears off.
They sail north and become becalmed at the
equator. They suffer from thirst. Slimy things
are on the surface, and lights are on the water
and masts at night.
A spirit follows them under the ship nine
fathoms down.
They hang the bird around his neck.
Part III
Part III: A skeleton ship comes,
and its ghastly crew gambles for
their souls. The crew dies.
He sees a ship far off. They rejoice thinking
they are saved, but then despair when they
wonder how a ship can sail without wind.
It is a skeleton ship with only a woman, Life-inDeath, and a mate, Death, for crew.
They play dice for the crew and she wins. The
sun sets and the skeleton ship departs.
The crew dies, one by one, and their souls fly
out.
Part IV
Part IV: He is left alone for seven
days. He blesses the water
snakes, and the spell is broken.
The wedding guest is afraid that he is speaking to a
ghost, but the Mariner assures him that he did not die.
He is left alone and tries to pray but cannot.
For seven days he looks at the dead men and
cannot die.
He sees the water snakes by the light of the
moon. He blesses them and is able to pray. The
albatross falls from his neck.
Part V
Part V: It rains. The ship is
moved north, its crew
reanimated by spirits. He
swoons and hears two voices.
He sleeps and awakens to find it raining. A roaring
wind and storm comes, and the dead crew rises and
mans the ship.
The wedding guest is afraid, but is reassured that it is
not the souls of the dead men that reanimate them, but
a troop of spirits blest. They sing around the mast at
dawn till noon, continuing to sail moved on from
beneath.
The spirit from the snow and ice moves them to the
equator again, and the ship stands still. It moves back
and forth then makes a sudden bound. He swoons.
He hears two voices in his sleep tell of his crime and
trials.
Part VI
Part VI: The two voices talk. He
wakes up in his native land. The
spirits signal the shore, and a
boat appears.
The two voices talk back and forth as the ship
is impelled northward faster than any human
could endure.
He wakes up and the ship sails slowly now. The crew is
still up, and their eyes curse him still.
The spell is broken and a sweet breeze blows on him
alone. He sees his native country.
The spirits leave the dead bodies and each appears in
its own form, full of light. They stand as signals to the
land, but make no sound.
A boat is heard coming to him. The Pilot, his
boy, and the Hermit are in the boat. He hopes
that the Hermit will shrieve his soul to wash
away the blood of the albatross.
Part VII
Part VII: The ship sinks but he is
saved. He is compelled to
wander and tell his tale.
The lights of the signal have disappeared, and
the boat appears warped, the sails like
skeletons.
As they approach a rumble is heard under the
water. The ship splits and sinks.
His body floats and is found and dragged aboard the
boat. When he moves his lips they scream. He rows the
boat.
When they reach land he begs the Hermit to shrieve him. The
Mariner is overcome by a fit which forces him to tell his tale.
Since then, he has had to travel from land to land and tell his
tale. He has powers of speech and knows the men to whom
he must tell his tale.
The sounds of merriment come from the wedding party
within. He tells how sweet it is for him to have
company after being alone on the sea and tells the
wedding guest to love all thing both great and small.
The wedding guest leaves and rose the next
morn wiser and sadder.
Elements of Romanticism
Suffering for offenses against God,
man and Nature, the hero-villains
wander the earth, alone and
misunderstood. Their personal
torment in a vast universe is
emphasized by desolate settings of
icebound seas, jagged mountains
and bottomless abysses.
Romanticists believed that retreats
into nature provide the soul with a
refreshing, a renewal. Nature also
provides the mind with the
peaceful environment in which to
think more clearly.
Suffering for offenses against God,
man and Nature, the hero-villains
wander the earth, alone and
misunderstood. Their personal
torment in a vast universe is
emphasized by desolate settings of
icebound seas, jagged mountains
and bottomless abysses
The Supernatural
The poem is full of strange, macabre, uncanny or
“Gothic” elements. Gothic horror fiction was very
popular at the time it was written.
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the albatross as a bird of “good omen”;
Death and Life-in-death;
the spirit from “the land of mist and snow” and the
two spirits the mariner hears in his trance;
the angelic spirits which move the bodies of the
dead men
the madness of the pilot and his boy
the mariner's “strange power of speech”
the strange weather
Themes
Theme
Similar to other Romantics, Coleridge
believed that the seeds of destruction
and creation are contained each within
the other. One cannot create
something without destroying
something else. Likewise, destruction
leads to the creation of something
new.
Theme
Coleridge focuses in the poem on
humanity's relationship to the natural
world. In a larger sense, it is not his
killing of the bird that is wrong, but the
mariner's—and by extension
humankind's—callous and destructive
relationship with nature that is in error.
Coleridge intends to confront this
relationship and place it in a larger
philosophical context.
Theme
Part of Coleridge's technique is to
personify aspects of nature as
supernatural spirits. A great deal of
Christian symbolism and some allegory
are present—particularly at the end of
Part 4, where connections are made
between suffering, repentance,
redemption, and penance.
Theme
Supernatural beings appear in the
poem as symbolic or allegorical
figures, representing the forces of
nature, life, death, and retribution.
The mariner confronts these
figures and must ultimately
appease them in order to obtain
his salvation.
Popular Cultural Connections
and Allusions
Frankenstein
Letter II
"I am going to
unexplored regions, to
"the land of mist and
snow." but I shall kill no
albatross; therefore do
not be alarmed for my
safety or if I should
come back to you as
worn and woeful as the
"Ancient Mariner."
Frankenstein
Like one who, on a lonely
road,
Doth walk in fear and
dread,
And, having once
turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his
head;
Because he knows a
frightful fiend
Doth close behind him
tread.
Dracula
A direct allusion
appears in the
newspaper account
of the calm before
the storm that drove
the Demeter
(carrying Dracula)
into Whitby: “As idle
as a painted ship
upon a painted
ocean”
Willy Wonka
[Introducing fizzy
lifting drinks]
WONKA: Bubbles,
bubbles
everywhere, but not
a drop to drink.
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard says to
the Scarecrow,
"Every
pusillanimous
creature that crawls
on the earth or
slinks through slimy
seas has a brain!"
Angel
Bodies, bodies
everywhere and
not a drop to
drink.
Iron Maiden
Serenity
In the movie the
government agent
claims the character
River Tam is like an
albatross at which point
the captain and main
character Mal
comments the the
albatross was a sign of
good luck until some
idiot killed it.