Discussion Topic
Descriptions of the ancient mariner and the narrator in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Summary:
The ancient mariner is described as having a long grey beard, glittering eyes, and a skinny hand. He appears otherworldly and compelling, with an aura of mystery and wisdom. The narrator, on the other hand, is a guest at a wedding who is initially reluctant to listen but becomes captivated by the mariner's tale.
Who is the narrator of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?
The poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in which an old sailor accosts a guest at a wedding and tells him a fantastic tale of peril and redemption, uses what is known in literature and film as a framing device. It is also called a frame story, a frame narrative, or bookends. This embedded narrative, or story within a story technique, allows writers to establish context and provide multiple perspectives or points of view.
In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the story is ultimately told by an unnamed third-person narrator. This person, presumably the poet himself, provides the narration at the beginning and the end of the poem. The voices of the wedding guest and of the mariner are written as dialog with quotation marks within the body of the third-person narrative.
The first five stanzas of the poem are comprised of commentary by this third-person narrator. They establish the context of the wedding and the identity of the person to whom the mariner is speaking. They also make it clear that the mariner has some sort of power over the wedding guest so that he holds him in thrall with his tale. As Coleridge writes, "He cannot choose but hear." The last two stanzas of the poem also feature this third-person narrator. Once the mariner has left, the narrator offers a comment that the wedding guest has become "a sadder and a wiser man" due to the story that is told to him by the mariner.
Most of the poem is, of course, told by the ancient mariner in a first-person account, but it must be emphasized that throughout the poem the mariner's voice is framed as dialog, and that the story actually all takes place outside the wedding. This allows readers to either believe or disbelieve the mariner's tale. In this context, there is no objective way to determine the veracity of the mariner's seemingly fantastic story. This is one of Coleridge's intentions in providing the third-person frame for the story.
The mariner tells his story to a random younger guy who's on his way to attend a family wedding. This guest is actually outdoors and on his way into the wedding, and is a stranger to the mariner, who stops him to tell him the tale. The speaker of the poem calls this listener "The Wedding-Guest."
I was able to answer this question by looking closely at the first few stanzas of the poem. Let's take a look:
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 Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,Okay, so the guest keeps talking all through this second stanza, and we can tell that he's done talking at the end, because of the quotation mark after the word "din." Here, the guest is saying that the groom's doors are open, that the guest is closely related to the groom, that all the other wedding guests are already there, that the food is ready to be eaten, and that you can even hear from outside how happy and loud everything is inside the building where the wedding is being held. Here's the third stanza:
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand,So here, the old guy has grabbed onto the wedding guest's hand and launched straight into a story about a ship. But the wedding guest is freaked out and says, approximately, "Quit it! Let go of me, you crazy guy." The old guy lets go of the young guy's hand. Let's check out one more stanza:
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye—Here, we see that although the mariner has let go of the wedding guest's hand, the mariner is still "holding" onto the guest by the power of his sparkling eyes. So the guest stands there and, like a little kid, listens obediently to the story. We can be sure that it's this same "Wedding-Guest" who listens to the whole tale because he's mentioned at the end of the poem, too: the speaker of the poem tells us that the wedding guest, having listened to the whole story, is stunned and sad but also a bit wiser than he was before he heard the mariner's tale.
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The narrator is an old, weathered, and wizened seaman who meets "three gallants" on their way to a wedding feast. He is able to detain one of them, and he proceeds to relate to this young man his tale of spiritual mysteries that are both wonderful and terrible. These mysteries that the Mariner has learned are best understood intuitively and emotionally rather than intellectually.
The purpose of the Mariner's strange tale is much like that of a parable since the Mariner preaches the lesson:
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all. (615-618)
The Mariner's tribulations all began after he demonstrated no respect for one of God's creatures, the albatross, when he killed it with his crossbow. Certainly, his lack of respect for the spiritual world cost the sailor dearly--he tells the wedding guest, "I had done a hellish thing"--because the other sailors forced him to wear the dead bird around his neck like a cross when the winds stopped and they could no longer travel.
Further, the old Mariner states that after his killing of the albatross, a spirit, one of the inhabitants of the planet that is neither a departed soul or an angel, follows the ship, "plaguing" them. As his shipmates die, each "cursed me with his eye." The sailor can barely stand the staring eyes as the ship yet floats for the biblical "seven days and seven nights."
Finally, one night the moon shone and the Mariner saw strange sights and "commotion" in the sky and on earth. Somehow the bodies of the dead crew are "inspired" and the ship begins to move. The Mariner credits "angelic spirits." Also, when he notices in the sea great water snakes who glitter blue, green, and black in the moonlight, he blesses them and the albatross falls from his neck; his life is redeemed.
Describe the ancient mariner in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
The mariner is old (ancient), described as having a long, grey beard. The mariner kills an albatross, apparently for no reason, even though the albatross had seemed to lead them out of the Antarctic. The mariner's crew first curse him for doing such a thing. But then they rationalize the shooting by saying that is was right to shoot the bird that brought the fog and the mist.
He and his crew become lost at sea and he realizes his crime is the cause of their situation. The crew then hangs the dead bird on the mariner's neck. (It is now his cross to bear.) His men drown. The mariner lives on (Life-in-Death) and must continue to travel to new lands in order to find a stranger and confess his sin.
The mariner is lonely and feels forsaken because he is cursed to an existence of repeating his confession. The wedding guest is at first terrified and then captivated and sympathetic to the mariner's speech. The one consolation (and/or moral) is that the mariner is temporarily assuaged by confessing his story, he is wiser from the experience, and his confession may teach a lesson to others. In this last stanza, "He" refers to the Wedding-Guest.
He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn.
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
The mariner is cursed because of a thoughtless act but he is also a kind of timeless teacher and this is both a burden and a duty.
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