Pilgrims Progress

Rime of The Ancient Mariner

Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is wrote in a way that the reader is expected to temporarily allow him or herself to believe it to be able to understand it. The poem itself is about a Mariner who is telling his tale of sin and forgiveness by God to a man referred to as the "Wedding Guest." The Mariner is supposedly responsible for the death of all of the crew on his ship because of his killing of a creature which was to bring them the wind that they needed to put power into the sails of the ship. The whole point of the poem is to encourage or convince the reader to believe the tale that Coleridge tells.

Coleridge wrote the poem as a means to induce the reader with what he calls a "willing suspension of disbelief." The poem is written in such a way that the reader is expected to willingly decide to temporarily believe the almost unbelievable story. The reason a person is to make sure that he or she believes it temporarily to be true is because the Mariner in the story is trying to get the point of forgiveness from God across to the reader and if the reader chooses not to believe the story behind the poem then they will not understand the effect of the point of the tale. Coleridge's main point in writing the story was to get people to understand forgiveness by understanding the poem.

The Mariner in the poem is telling his tale to a "Wedding Guest" who has no choice but to listen and to believe. The "Wedding Guest" in the poem represents "everyman" in the sense that "everyone" is to be at the marriage of the Mariner to life. That is, the reader is to follow, live, and participate with the idea of the poem.

Coleridge tells of a Mariner on a ship who makes a sin against God and therefore is cursed. This curse, the killing of an Albatross - one of God's creatures, costs the entire crew on the ship their lives yet he lives so that he can realize what he has done and be given a chance to ask forgiveness for his sin. The deaths occurred when a ship was sited and on it two women like figures were playing dice and life won the Mariner and death got the crew. Until he began to pray and ask for forgiveness the crew's souls couldn't enter Heaven but one he did the curse was broken, his life was saved, and Angels came down from Heaven and took the crew's souls with them. He had become a saved man.

The whole point of the story becomes clear in the following lines.

"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."

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,