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Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a very long romantic poem, written in 1798. A major facet of romantic poetry is the use of modern or accessible language. But that is not the case with this poem. Coleridge deliberately uses antiquated language. The poem starts off with a group of men going to a wedding. A Mariner stops one of them and the man replies 'by thy long beard and glittering eye, now wherefore stopp'st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, and I am next of kin; the guests are met, the feast is set: may'st hear the merry din’. All that means is: why’d you stop me, the wedding is about to start. The mariner begins to tell the man his story, and a very dramatic story that is. Long ago, the mariner and his crew set out on a journey to Antarctica. As they get closer, “the ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. It cracked and growled, roared and howled”. Coleridge personifies nature and it almost becomes another character in the story. Then, an albatross appears and the mariner shoots it with his bow. The ship ends up in a dead zone- no wind. The sailors begin to think the bird was a good omen and a bad thing it got shot. So as punishment, they hang the dead bird around the mariner’s neck. Later on, they see a ship sailing towards them. They realize that it is a ghost ship. All the sailors get killed except for the mariner. He begins to pray and the bird falls off his neck. Then when the moon comes out the ship begins to move again and all the dead sailors wake up as zombies who sail the ship home. Just as they reach the port, the zombies disappear and the ship sinks but the mariner makes it to land. Now he feels compelled to tell his story forever as part of his penance for killing the albatross, and that’s why the mariner bothered the wedding guest in the first place.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores many themes of romantic poetry. Among those is a huge focus on nature and its power. It is also very emotion laden and very dramatic. Also incorporated are supernatural elements and the idea of sin and restoration. None of the bad things that happened to the ship would have happened if the mariner didn’t kill the albatross; so why did he? And if at first the crew thought the bird was a bad omen, why did they proceed to tie it around the mariner’s neck?

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