The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Essay - 1

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Essay ExampleThis paper intends to hash out how this poem is considered as a poem of sin and redemption though the physical and soul journey (Nelson, 2001, p.148) of the mariner. Poem of Sin The poem is generally considered as a poem of sin. The mariner and his sailors got stuck in a thick and foggy ice field while trying to escape the thunderstorm in the Antarctica. They constitute an millstone that steered them through the thick fog, so that they might find good winds for their ship. But, we see that the mariner killed the albatross for no reason. This was actually the sin that the poem dialogue about. The reader is left surprised upon this decision of the mariner, regarding why he chilliness the albatross that had come there for their help. This perplexity is what irritates the reader in the first read, yet as the reader follows the poem, he finds it really rich in context and theme. The albatross is shown as a sym bol of Nature, or Gods presence. take At length did cross an Albatross, /Thorough the fog it came /As if it had been a Christian soul, /We haild it in Gods name (lines 63-66). When the mariner shot the albatross, God became angry for him for his sin, and denounced upon him a lot woe and misery. The sailors confronted with slimy things on the oceans, and ghosts and spirits, which finally killed all sailors, and destroyed the mariners journey. Buchan (1969) writes in his essay, The Sad Wisdom of the Mariner The shooting is an act, unpremeditated and unmeant, that merely must be accounted for. (p.97). The curse, that befell the mariner due to his unnatural act (Voglino, 1999, p.53), made him lose his ship and his companions but finally, he met a rescuer, the Hermit, who brought him ashore. Also, we see that when the mariner shot the albatross, the curse struck the sailors, and they got so angry with the mariner that they hung the albatross around his neck. This was a constant reminde r for the mariner about his sin, which had brought immense suffering to the exclusively crew. An albatross around ones neck has become an idiom since. An albatross refers to a mistake that one has done and cannot undo it, and which is constantly adding to the suffering. For example, a person bought a motor railcar, spends money on it to recondition it, but the car is not selling. It is only de partding more expenditure, because of going out of order frequently. So, the car is an albatross around his neck. The old mariner also had this albatross around his neck which constantly reminded him of his mistake or, in this case, sin. Whenever he looked at it, he was reminded of what he did that angered the Nature. Sagar (2005, p.15) writes that, When the Ancient Mariner wantonly kills that Albatross, the other sailors think it as an unpardonable sin. They believe that no human being has the right to decide who is to give-up the ghost and who is to die. So they decide punishment for his sin. The sin has also been understood in terms of the mariners pride, in literature. Pride has been known as mans earliest sin, which dates back to Adam and Eve. Literature suggests that mariners act of shooting the bird of good omen has something to do with human pride. The albatross came with a lot of good luck for the ship. But the mariner decided to shoot it because he thought that he could do well without it, that he was luxuriant to