Review of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poem, The Rime of The Ancient Mariner

Analysis of the poem

To begin, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a beautifully constructed poem. Its ability to use imagery as well as other literary devices gives the reader a very clear view of the story taking place. I very much enjoyed the way in which the physical nature was used throughout the poem, and more specifically how it was controlled by the spiritual nature. It was evident that a greater force was controlling the rime, perhaps a lurking spirit, and this spirit is responsible for both the agony and the fortune that the sailors experience.

For example, the spirit’s ability to guide the ship through the rime when the sailors treated the albatross kindly and respectfully is symbolic of the spiritual world being able to control the physical world. And this is precisely what I believe the poem is about. It is a very unique way of expressing ones belief in another force that we humans cannot recognize through the naked eye.

I also suppose that the Ancient Mariner was taught a very valuable lesson from killing the albatross. He is shown that we have to respect the environment that surrounds us. Whether that be the animals, plants or any other piece of the physical nature that we have become accustom with, we have to learn how to coexist and respect one another.

The Ancient Mariner exhibits both behaviors throughout the poem. Firstly, when he and his fellow sailors reach the rime, they are introduced to the albatross and treat it extremely kindly. They feed it, play with it, and treat it as if it were one of them. While interacting with the albatross in this manner, the Ancient Mariner and the ship experience great fortune. They are suddenly granted a path through which they can steer through due to the previously lacking wind that is pushing the ship through the rime.

Alternatively, when the Ancient Mariner kills the albatross, mistreats it, he begins to experience misfortune in the form of his fellow sailors dying, leaving him feeling responsible for their deaths. Therefore the Ancient Mariner should have realized through these two examples that if he wants good fortune and ‘help’ from the surrounding spirits then he must treat his surrounding environment respectfully, as if it were another human.

An image that I thought was very powerful comes at the end of part III when the Ancient Mariner exclaims that “every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow!”. I feel as though this gives the reader a great sense of what the Ancient Mariner was feeling at this moment. Remorse and regret, among other things, are what plagues his mind at that very moment and this image does an impressive job of painting a picture for the reader.

In saying this, it should be evident that the sense at play here is sight. By describing the souls as passing by like the whizz of his crossbow it tells the reader that they were moving by him at a rapid pace. Also this description demonstrates his remorse since the sailors lay dead, and their souls roaming, because the Ancient Mariner killed the albatross with his crossbow.

Conclusion

Finally I believe the poem is titled such due to literal reasons as well as some more ambiguous ones. The rime as a literal term appears throughout the poem as a sort of blockage for the ship and so including it into the title would be justified. Furthermore, and I am not quite sure of this, but I believe that it is titled such due to a twist on words. The poem contains the literary technic of rhyming, having the end of the second line and the end of the fourth line in every stanza rhyme. Rime and rhyme are homonyms and rime in its most usual form appears throughout the poem, making the choice of the title very appropriate.