First of all, yes. I really am posting this. All 918 glorious words of it!
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a story about an Ancient Mariner who attends a wedding and decides to relate to a guest there his experience of going out to sea, and killing an albatross and the consequences of his doing so. At first the guest obliges the man by listening to his story, but quickly becomes apprehensive of the mysterious Ancient Mariner, when the seaman related to him how he had escaped death, whilst the rest of his crew was killed. But after the Ancient Mariner finishes recalling his experience to the wedding guest, the wedding guest leaves a sadder and wiser man. The wedding guest reacted in this way, because he realized the sacredness of all life, the consequence of the Mariner’s actions, and the presence of God in this matter.
The Mariner began his story with explaining his ship’s voyage out to sea, and how they became caught in a storm that caused them to be taken in the direction of the South Pole. It was a frightening time, and their location at sea was lonely and desolate, with nothing but the snow fog and ice to look at. Amidst all of this, there came an Albatross that befriended the crew. They fed it, believing this creature to be a good omen. However, without any reason at all, the Mariner killed the innocent bird. This heartless action would soon be the catalyst for many serious consequences. Surely the guest realized that this was an obscene act that his present companion had committed, and thought it inexcusable to kill a blameless animal who was not threatening, by any means.
The wedding guest realized that every sin, no matter how seemingly small it may seem, will have a consequence to it. In this example, the Mariner’s fellow shipmates were angry with him, but soon excused it, not knowing that their indifference would cost them their very lives. One may pose the question: why did they not do something earlier, such as stopping the Mariner from doing such a cruel thing? Or, why did they not somehow take away certain privileges of this man who thought it not wrong to commit such an atrocity? However, they reacted the way that they did. The men later became cursed and soon fell dead on the ship’s deck. The Ancient Mariner would still be punished, though in a different way.
The wedding guest must have been wondering why the Mariner had not been killed, but instead, had lived to recount his tale. He was most likely wondering why God would allow the Mariner to live, whilst his crew had perished. Perhaps it was because the Mariner, although he still lived, struggled continually with the guilt of the blood that was on his hands. His act that he committed of killing the albatross, as well as the part that he had played in his former shipmates’ deaths, and the remorse that had come from survivor’s guilt alone would be more appropriate for him than death. One may also wonder if God did not use the Ancient Mariner’s story in a way that would impact people who would have done the same thing that the Ancient Mariner had done, but upon hearing the story, changed their mind. Much like the character of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic work, The Scarlet Letter, the Ancient Mariner lived with the constant reminder of his sin, as well as the devastating impact that it had caused. However, earlier something had happened that had caused the curse to begin to dissipate, though not completely disappear altogether. When the Ancient Mariner was still on board the ship, accompanied by the corpses of his late crew, he decided to exchange his attitude of contempt that he had had towards the slimy creatures that lived in the sea, and instead decided to appreciate them for what they were. The Ancient Mariner recounted, “Oh happy living things! No tongue their beauty might declare. A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware; Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware.” While this was surely some sort of reassurance for the Ancient Mariner, and perhaps a sign of the possible redemption to come, the he never fully lived in a state where he felt that the full depth of his guilt could ever be completely cleansed.
After his talk with the Ancient Mariner, the wedding guest “went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn; A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.” Perhaps the wedding guest had been personally struggling with knowing what was right and wrong in his own life, and the Ancient Mariner’s story spoke to him in a way that would impact some of his own future decisions. He now grasped, perhaps more than ever before, the fact that life is sacred and should be protected, and saw, that, in light of the Mariner’s actions, how God continued to be present. In the conclusion of the story, the Ancient Mariner calls the wedding guest to action in this: “Farewell, farewell; but this I tell to thee, thou Wedding Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well, both man and bird and beast.” The reader of this story can hope that the wedding guest heeded the Ancient Mariner’s advice, avoided destruction, and recounted the Ancient Mariner’s tale to others who needed to hear it, much like he did.
If you made it through all of this, I commend you, and hope that you obtained something useful from it! :)
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