American Literature

S. T. Coleridges masterpiece, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is an allegory of sin and expiation, guilt and redemption or regeneration, loneliness and suffering. It tells us how a human being suffered both physically and spiritually for killing a bird unjustly. Here the killing of the bird does not demand murder of the Mariner, the punishment here is of a different kind. The sinner, in this poem, has to undergo a long terrible suffering which is actually a process of expiation of the purification of his soul. It is a story within a story. The underlying story always has a moral significance. In worldly it might have a moral end in view but out worldly it ought to satisfy the literary urge in the reader. Only beautiful blending of the two purposes shall make a work of literature really great.

A brief discussion of the poem 
The poem consists of seven stanzas. The very first one indicates the commitment of the crime shooting of the Albatross.  From the second to the fifth stanza, there is a description of Mariners terrible suffering. Finally the rest two stanzas gradually announce his possible spiritual salvation. Thus the whole poem can be structured in this way-
1) Stanza 1- Commitment of the crime.
2) Stanza 2-5 Damnation, which leads towards redemption.
3) Stanza 6-7 Purgation or purification.

In the last two lines of the first stanza, when readers all on a sudden, come to be informed of that, .........with my cross bow  I shot the Albatross. Readers are surprised, and do not immediately realize the Mariners motives behind killing the innocent bird. Perhaps he has killed it in a moment of annoyance or anger, or out of mere frivolity. He might have done it out of his jealousy as well. However, Coleridge seems to take the nature of the crime seriously and bring the criminal under heavier punishment. Why he has to undergo so much punishment for killing a simple bird A careful reader can suggest the following possible interpretations.
Firstly, It is not just the killing of an ordinary bird Coleridge makes the bird a symbol of a human being of even better a super human being as is noticed in the lines As if it had been a Christian Soul  We hailed in Gods name

Secondly, his uncertainty of motives behind killing the bird, in fact, symbolizes the essential frivolity of many crimes done against humanity and the ordered system of the world. It shows the perversity of will and lack of understanding of the worth of God creation.

Thirdly, the bird was accepted as a welcome guest and for nine days it shared their food and play. So the killing of the bird certainly is not sometimes trivial. It is the violation of the sanctified relation between the host and the guest.

Finally, by killing the bird he has broken the bond between himself and nature. Reader can also take it as the violation of the bond between himself and God of consequence of which he becomes spiritually dead.

In the second stanza of the poem, readers see that the Mariners shipmates become accomplices in his come by supporting the killing. Then nature becomes the avenger. The ship turns into a painted ship upon a painted ocean. The sun shines scorching overhead. The ocean begins to hot. Their supply of drinking water runs out and they cannot drink the salty seawater. Their tongues withered away at the root and they could not even speak. At last the other sailors cursed the Mariner for their distress and hung the dead Albatross round his neck as a symbol of sinner.

In this way, the realization of the nature of his guilt and his expiation by suffering the supernatural punishment proceed together. At the end, the readers see that he gets rid from supernatural punishment and gets a new life.    

Coleridges use of symbolism
The sea bird Albatross symbolizes some moral values of hospitality and gratitude. It also becomes a symbol of life itself in the Mariners lifeless world. The act of killing involving the crime of the Mariner, symbolizes mans violation of moral values. The poets deliberate silence about the motive of the crime symbolizes the essential irrationality of the human mind, the mystery of human mind.
However, the use of the supernatural reveals the greatest symbol of the mystery of life of the unseen powers controlling human beings. Coleridge has used a number of supernatural elements, which are rationally inexplicable, e.g. the seraph land, the specters ship with the life in death, the unknown spirit following them etc. Other objects of nature like the sun and the moon are used as powerful symbols in this poem.

The sun symbolizes the rational world, which is benevolent in the beginning of the voyage, but later becomes malicious after the commitment of the crime. The moon symbolizes the divine spirit, which remains indifferent to the Mariners or deals, keeping to her own curse throughout the voyage. The whole poem the sun and the moon, the powers of water and air, the act of killing and that of blessing, the state of solitude and that of goodly company, the nightmare and the awakening the drowning these symbolize that some kind of redemption or reconciliation is at work in nature. The two voices, whose conversations the Mariner hears subconsciously, symbolizes the spiritual and psychological part of the Mariners mind since he is not essentially evil minded, he is conscious of his crime and the need of redemption. He hears subconsciously, The man hath penance done. And penance more will do.

However, the poem involves a paradox for the wedding ceremony symbolizes the beginning of a new life of the two united souls, but the Mariner has reached the end of his life, when nothing remains for him except the past memories of sorrow, sin and repentance. If the Mariners voyage is regarded as a symbolic journey of life, readers note that he also started it happily like the newly married couple. The storm of sea drew the ship to the land of mist. Here mist symbolizes moral confusion from which the Mariner and other sailors were suffering. Some critics have described the bird itself as Christ so the killing of the bird by the Mariner represents the sin of crucification, enabling the bird to embrace the death of martyr and the Ancient Mariner can be seen as the archetypal Judas or the universal sinner who betrays Christ by sinning.

Coleridge juxtaposes the natural and supernatural element
The supernatural elements are not abruptly introduced in to the poem. Indeed, it is difficult to locate exactly where the natural ends and the supernatural begins. In The Ancient Mariner the series of supernatural event mainly begins with the appearance of the ghostly ship with its angelic crew, Death and life-in-Death.

The description of the ship itself is supernatural. The poet does not tell us the exact shape of the ship. At first the ship appears to them like a dot. Gradually it becomes bigger and looks like a patch of mist. The magical ship also keeps on changing its course as it tries to avoid some spirit of the water following to it.

When the Mariner comes across the shape of the ship, he looks at it with horror. The description of the sail of the ship is original. At first the sailors could not see the total shape of the ship, the old sailor first saw the sail of the ship and assumed that it must be a ship with a real sail to help them. The old sailor cries seeing the sail A sail a sail. The bodies of the crew are animated by a troop of angelic beings and the ship moves on without any apparent wind. All these are possible only when the supernatural power acts on something and from the poem it is clear that the spiritual world controls and utilizes the natural world.

The ancient mariner rises up from a deep sleep. But before he regained his consciousness, he felt that he could hear in his soul a dialogue between two voices. When he lies unconscious on the deck, he hears the First Voice and Second Voice discussing his fate.

It is natural that these two voices are the two sides of humanity that every reader possesses. When anybody commits a crime, he feels a kind of repentance within himself. One side of his mind allows the crime, but another side of his mind forbids him. But the description of two voices is, no doubt, supernatural. So long the coming ship and the mariners ship moved by an invisible power which is supernatural but after the sailor gets back his consciousness, he notices that their ship moves by gentle weather which is the sign of the natural. 

Thus the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is essentially a symbolic poem and Coleridges craftsmanship in dealing with different symbols reveals his poetic genius at it best and from above analysis reader can certainly say that nature is both kind and benevolent.