Summary & Analysis

Rime of the Ancient Mariner



At the first reading of "The Mariner", a person may believe that the story may just be a simple tragedy. But as I re-read the story for the third time, the symbolism really showed itself. Although the poem may still be a little abstract to me, I still understand it to a good extent. We start off in a garden where a wedding is about to take place. As 3 men walk to enter the wedding, the Mariner grabs 1 of the 3 men. The confused wedding guest tries to leave, but is restrained by the Mariner and is forced to listen to the Mariners story.
The Mariner's story starts off with the Mariner at sea with his crew. At first, the ship is in good fortune with their travel, but soon a wind takes them south. They are now very far south, and their fortunes look bleak. Luckily, an albatross happens to fly aboard the ship and good fortunes again return to the ship. The winds are now in their favor and they are now sailing back north. Then, the Mariner proceeds to shoot and kill the albatross, the good omen.
This is when some of the symbolism is apparent to me, or actually was shown to me.
If you look at what the crew does with the albatross, it symbolizes Jesus Christ. The ship is obviously in troubled times and then a good omen shows up. The times are good, but then the bird is killed.
After that, the bad times are back and so the albatross is hung on the Mariner's neck as a punishment. After the men have sailed for days without food or water, their hopes rise as they see a ship in the distance. Their hopes die down as they ship approaches and upon the ship and "Death" & "Life-In-Death" are aboard the ship. The 2 appear as a skeleton and a sickly-pale woman, respectively. The 2 roll dice to see who the 2 will take. Death wins the lives of the crew while Life-In-Death wins the Mariner. All the crew members begin to die off one-by-one, leaving only the Mariner left, to "live in death".
This part confused me a little, the first paragraph had some fairly visible symbolism, but this part was pretty cryptic. The least I could tell, is this part was his punishment for killing the albatross. This was his penance.


Vincent Nguyen