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Unit 3: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge

scholarly glosses—a bit of parody intended at the poets and writers of thoughtful glosses of this Notes
type; such phrases as “Platonic Constantinopolitan” appear consciously silly. It is said that the
glosses are just a humorous irrelevancy intended to make the poem look archaic and that the
most important text is the poem itself. This text is complicated, with Christian representation, in
its moral lesson that “all creatures great and small” were made by Divinity and must be loved
be it the Albatross or the slimy snakes in the decaying ocean and in its characters.
If a person agrees to this argument, then that person faces the job of learning the key to Samuel’s
symbolism: what does the Albatross signify what do the spirits denote, and so on. Critics have
made numerous clever efforts to do just that and have discovered in the “Rime” numerous
thought-provoking readings, ranging from political allegory to Christian parable. However
these readings are dulled by the fact that none of these (with the probable exception of the
Christian reading, much of which is surely intended by the poem) appears crucial for the story
itself. Any individual can take these explanations of the poem only if he/she disrespects the
glosses almost completely.

Another interesting, although questionable, reading of the poem says that Samuel meant it as a
commentary on the methods in which individuals understand the teachings of the past and the
methods in which the past is simply incomprehensible. By filling his archaic ballad with rich
symbolism that cannot be decoded in any particular, definitive manner and then inclosing that
symbolism with side notes that pick at it and provide a very theoretical spiritual-scientific
explanation of its classifications, Samuel builds tension between the unambiguous-but-ridiculous
notes and the ambiguous poem, revealing a gulf between the “old” poem and the “new” attempt
to understand the “old” poem. The message is that, although some moral lessons from the past
are yet to be comprehended—”he liveth best who loveth best” is not difficult to comprehend—
several other characteristics of its tales are not very simply grasped.

In any event, this first section of the poem takes the Mariner through the worst of his shows and
trials, in action, the lesson that will be openly voiced in the second segment. The Mariner kills
the Albatross in bad faith, exposing himself to the aggression of the forces governing the entire
universe (the horrible Life-in-Death and the very un-Christian-seeming spirit beneath the sea).
It is uncertain how these forces are linked to each other. Is it the Life-in-Death which is in league
with the sunken spirit or is it that their instantaneous arrival is just a coincidence.
The Mariner, after being cursed, is able to get access to the favour of God and is able to get back
his capability to pray—only by understanding that the things he considers monsters are strikingly
beautiful in the eyes of God and that he must love them all just like he should have loved the
Albatross he killed. In the final three books of the poem, the Ancient Mariner’s meeting with a
Hermit will spell out this message clearly, and the reader will understand why the Mariner
stopped the Wedding-Guest to tell him his entire tale.
This second section of the poem concludes the Ancient Mariner’s tale. In this section he happens
to meet the host of seraph-like spirits who rather strangely rescue his ship by entering the dead
bodies of the fallen mariners. It is here that the Mariner gets his moral salvation after confessing
to the Hermit. He should continue making the following confessions throughout his life together
with the one he has made to the Wedding-Guest. This section is devoid of much of the strange
imagistic intensity that was seen in the first segment, and the mystical powers even begin to
appear sympathetic (the sunken spirit from the land of mist and snow is referred to as “the
lonesome spirit” in a side note). The more dreadful elements still come up sometimes, though;
the insanity of the Pilot’s son and the sinking of the ship could have come from a gritty, dramatic
story such as Moby- Dick, and the seraphs of the earlier scene remind us of fantastical works
as Paradise Lost.

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