Rime Of The Ancient Mariner Essay

Samuel Coleridge’s allegorical poem of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells of a story of an old mariner who destroys a beautiful piece of nature, in this case, an albatross, without any reasoning and suffers from his punishment from nature where in the end, learns to recognize the beauty of it. Readers at the time perceive the poem with religious interpretations; however it was not until the conclusion of the Romanticism period that the poem is recognized for its thematic undertones concerning nature underneath its façade. Written as a ballad set in a framed story, the reader witnesses the old mariner from his crime committed against nature (the killing of the albatross), through his punishment, and up to his enlightenment (where he blesses
From his initial scorn at nature up to the end when he receives a learned respect from it, much of the images and symbolism Coleridge utilizes in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner serve to personify and treat the natural world as a living entity. For one, the albatross is representative of nature itself. It served as a good omen to the crew, used as a sort of lucky charm in guiding the ship. To the mariner, it means
The ship essentially becomes a prison, trapped in the middle of the ocean and is lacks any drinking water. Here, Coleridge uses the albatross as a representation of the senseless disregard for the power of nature in all of humanity. The old mariner suffers and is punished for his crime. After shooting the albatross, the old mariner and his shipmates run out of water and rain refuses to drop. The sun torments him and the water around him that he cannot drink taunts him. The mariner’s entire crew is mercilessly killed, leaving him alone. By suffering in isolation, the mariner is given time to reflect on nature as not only as his ultimate benefactor, but also his destroyer. During the Mariner’s experience, not only did nature serve to sustain his life, but it also retaliates against him. Nature revolts against mankind several times and each time, nature claims its dominance over mankind. That being said, Coleridge believed that nature is naturally good, and that it is mankind’s flaw that causes turmoil (Beer 4-5). It is mankind’s flaw that compromised its relationship with nature, rather than with nature to