Discussion Topic
Analysis and Paraphrasing of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Stanzas and Speakers
Summary:
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses vivid imagery and multiple speakers to convey its themes. Imagery in stanzas 7 and 8 of Part 2 highlights a stagnant, eerie sea under an intense sun, emphasizing the ship's immobility. The poem's primary speaker, the Mariner, recounts his tale in a mesmerizing tone, while a framing third-person narrator introduces the story. Stanzas 10-14 depict the consequences of the Mariner killing the albatross, with supernatural imagery and the Mariner's guilt manifesting as the bird hung around his neck. Stanzas 23 and 24 contrast sailors' superstitions, revealing their fickle nature. The poem ultimately explores the connection between humanity and nature through the Mariner's transformative journey.
What imagery is presented in stanzas 7 and 8 of Part 2 of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?
The whole poem of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is filled with vivid imagery , and the two stanzas you refer to in your question are no exception. At the end of part 1 the mariner shoots the albatross for no good reason, and the aftermath of that act starts immediately in section 2. The wind that had been moving the boat has ceased and things are not looking hopeful for the sailors on the ship. In the 7th stanza the language of the poem describes the sun. With no breeze, the silence of the sea and the ship is eerie and the heat of the sun sounds ominous. The sky is described as 'copper.' Copper is a rich, shining golden orange color and that sounds pretty until you consider the next line which reveals the "bloody Sun, at noon." The sun is usually described as yellow, but to...
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extend the heat and intensity to orange and red suggests a significant increase in the heat of the sun. Noon is the point of the most intense heat of the day and the sun is directly overhead which is why the mariner relates that the sun "right above the mast did stand, / No bigger than the moon." Because is straight overhead it appears smaller than in the horizon, but that does not diminish its power.
In the 8th stanza, the first line uses repetition to stress the passage of time. "Day after day, day after day" suggests more than four days and even four days with absolutely NO motion would seem impossible for the men on this boat. He explains that there was absolutely NO wind (breath) and NO motion. To make the experience more vivid he uses the metaphor of a painting. Paintings may show action or motion, but they aren't actually in motion. That is the situation of the ship. The ship is not moving any more than a ship in a painting is moving. The ship and the ocean are like flat images with no life in them. These two lines emphasis the complete lack of wind and forward movement for this ship.
Who is the speaker of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and what tone do they use?
This seems like a straightforward question, but it actually can be a little complicated. Most of the story is told in the voice of the ancient Mariner—hence the name of the poem—but the poem itself opens with the framing device of a third person narrator.
This narrator points out the ancient Mariner, saying "It is an ancient Mariner." The narrator then recounts that the Mariner stops one of three wedding guests trying to get to a wedding party. This guest is irritable at being delayed, because he has a wedding to attend. When the Mariner puts his "skinny hand" on the guest, the guest says, rather rudely: "unhand me, grey-beard loon!" But, the narrator tells us, when the Mariner fixes the wedding guest with his "eye," he is lost. He cannot help but listen to the story that will unfold. The narrative then shifts, as indicated by a quotation mark, into the first-person voice of the Mariner, who proceeds with the ballad.
The tone the mariner uses is sing-song: his is a mesmerizing voice, and he holds the wedding guest spell-bound. Part of this is done through the regular, rhyming cadence of the tale. The Mariner also uses archaic, medieval language and simple, vivid imagery to carry the listener through the many moods the tale evokes, from calm and hope to horror and despair to joy and reconciliation.
The speaker is the Ancient Mariner who has stopped a man in order to gain an audience for his story. He was a man who travelled the seas and had a wealth of stories to tell.
The poem is filled with a tone of dread and despair, particularly after the mariner has shot the albatross. The horrible images he sees of his dead and dying fellow crewmembers, the terrible thirst and pain that assails him as well as the spirits from the underworld that visit him strengthen this tone throughout the poem.
The tone is also supported by the fact that the narrator was quickly left alone on the ship and was forced to deal with the loneliness and terror that assailed him.
Explain stanzas 3 and 4 of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
A young man who is undoubtedly well-dressed and in a hurry to get to a wedding is stopped by a seedy-looking old sailor who wants to tell him a story. The sailor grabs hold of the wedding guest's garment, probably his coat, in order to detain him. This introduction adds the element of drama to Coleridges's poem and also provides a "ticking clock," because the young man is already late and may have an important part to play in the wedding. He may be an usher or even the best man.
The ancient mariner starts to tell his story.
"There was a ship," quoth he.
But the young man doesn't want to talk to this crazy-looking old character who is probably dressed in rags, and he suspects that the mariner only wants money. He says:
"Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
And the impatient young man probably uses his own hand to try to release himself. But there is something hypnotic about the ancient mariner's eyes. The line, "Eftsoons his hand dropped he" seems ambiguous, but it probably refers to the ancient mariner himself. He drops his hand because he has captured the wedding guest's attention and can detain him with his "glittering eye."
The wedding guest is stopped in his tracks. He listens with that wide-eyed fascination which we see in little children when they are being told a story or are watching something spellbinding on television. The old sailor has had plenty of experience in telling his story, and he knows, as he says later in the poem, how to pick the right person to tell it to and how to capture his attention.
Throughout the poem there will be references to the wedding guest's concern about missing the wedding. This provides an added element of drama and that "ticking clock" which is always helpful in creating dramatic interest. The wedding guest is already late. Then he is aware that the wedding has started, but he can't break the spell that the mariner is creating with his bizarre story. Finally the young man completely misses the wedding, and will have some explaining to do to the groom and others, but he becomes a "sadder and wiser" man as a result of hearing that tale.
The only line that seems a bit puzzling is:
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.
Most likely it is the ancient mariner who removes the hand with which he originally detained the impatient and unwilling listener, since he can hold him with his hypnotic eyes. The other interpretation would be that the wedding guest tries to free himself from the mariner's grip but then gives up the struggle and drops his hand.
Coleridge must have decided to begin his poem with a conflict between the ancient mariner and the wedding guest in order to create dramatic interest. The poet chose two very different types of men for contrast. One is old and ragged, the other young and dressed in his finest attire.
What are the events and imagery in stanzas 10, 11, 12, and 14 of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?
Yes, so the Mariner has killed, for no reason except maybe boredom, an albatross. Things that were going well on the ship's journey, now turned bad. The ship that moved so freely was now stationary, baking in the sun. The implication is that the killing of the albatross caused this awful turn of events. Now, stanza by stanza, the effects:
Stanza 10, the men were desperate for drink and:
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
When they look at the sea, all the sea creatures, water snakes, eels, fish, etc., all seemed slimy, gross and disgusting.
Stanza 11:
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
At night, although the creatures could not be seen, the multi-colored water looked like a boiling witch's cauldron. A fantastic and horrifying hallucination.
Stanza 12:
And some in dreams assuréd were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
And in the dreams of the suffering men on deck, they were sure that a spirit was following them beneath the ship, causing this curse of the dead albatross.
Stanza 14:
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
Blaming the Mariner for their misfortune, the men took the albatross, and, with a rope, hung the dead bird around his neck... a vengeful replacement for a Christian cross.
In Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," he is attempting to create a work of pure imagination. You should be careful not to let rational constraints get in the way of your interpretation. For your son's assignment, go with the images as you read them: slimy creatures crawling upon the slimy sea, electrical discharge shooting/dancing from the mast, a sea spirit following them from the bottom of the sea, etc. These contribute to this work of imagination. In general, these stanzas present the albatross being avenged. Pardon the expression, but these stanzas show all hell breaking loose upon the ship. And his shipmates see the mariner himself as the cause: they hang the killed albatross around his neck, since he is the one who shot it.
I've answered in a way that I think will help your son complete his assignment, but if he needs more detail feel free to email me.
What contrast is evident between stanzas 23 and 24 of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?
Stanzas 23 and 24 in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner refer to the dire consequences of shooting the albatross. In stanza 23, the sailors immediately feel that the mariner had done a terrible thing in shooting the bird, believing that he had brought them bad luck. The sailors are very superstitious and insist that the albatross had made the wind blow, which for sailing, is not only important, but absolutely necessary.
Then in Stanza 24, the reader sees that the sailors on the ship have had a change of heart when the sun rises and the mists evaporate. There is a sharp contrast in this stanza to their doom and gloom feelings in the previous stanza; now they feel like perhaps shooting the albatross was the right course of action. Perhaps, the bird was actually responsible for the previous bad weather, and killing it changed the sailors' luck.
The contrast in these two stanzas between the sailors' changing feelings about the albatross reveals how fickle and superstitious they actually are.
Describe the speakers and their voices in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) is one of the leading poets of the Romantic period in England. His poetic works are characterized by natural speech, simple themes, natural beauty, imagination, and emotion. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is no exception. This dramatic poem is written on two distinct levels with an unusual division of three speakers: the narrator, the Mariner, and the Wedding Guest.
The poem is also a story-within-a-story, one being that of the Mariner and the Wedding Guest and the other of the voyage of the Mariner. The tale is introduced by an unnamed narrator who does little more than introduce the poem in a limited third person voice in the first two lines of the opening stanza:
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?”
The narrator serves two purposes simultaneously. He introduces the poem with the meeting of the Mariner and the Wedding Guest, and he remains an omniscient narrator throughout but only with respect to the thoughts of the Wedding Guest at the beginning and the end of the poem. The main speaker is the Mariner who immediately begins to tell his story following the introduction:
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot chuse but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.
Thereafter, through the voice of the Mariner, Coleridge remains loyal to the characteristics of Romanticism by descriptions of images from the natural world:
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
In part 5 of the poem, Coleridge references two additional voices apparently coming from nature itself. Since the Mariner kills the Albatross, he must pay for his sin because the spirit of nature loves the creature. It is left to the reader to determine whether the voices are supernatural or imaginary in the mind of the Mariner.
Finally, at the end of the story, the Mariner once again addresses the Wedding Guest and leaves him with a moral: The way to connect to God is through the love of nature:
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.
After hearing the words of the Mariner, the Wedding Guest is transformed as all people are when they respect nature, but the tale leaves him in a somber mood:
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.