The Ancient Mariner

In “The Rime of the Ancient Marinere,” Coleridge describes the trials of a mariner after he shoots and kills an Albatross. The mariner shares his story with a wedding guest, and by the end of the poem we learn that it is the mariner’s lot in life to confess his story to people over the world as a sort of penance for killing the innocent bird. The poem employs simple language, yet it has bizarre imagery and a strange, complicated storyline. Frequent similes, for example: “As idle as a painted Ship/ Upon a painted Ocean,” (113-114), make the poem more accessible, relatable, and less abstract for the reader. The message of the poem, however, is clear: “He prayeth best who loveth best,/ All things both great and small:/ For the dear God, who loveth us,/ He made and loveth all,” (647-650). This poem reminds me somewhat of “To a Mountain Daisy” by Robert Burns that we looked at earlier in the semester. Burns, like the mariner, destroyed part of nature, and concluded by the end of the poem that he will share the same doom of the daisy he destroyed. The mariner faces an unlucky fate just like the Albatross he kills. He intervenes in nature, separating himself from it, and pays the price. He realizes he must connect himself to "bird and beast" (646) in order to achieve salvation.