The Ignorance of the Wedding-Guest
When we start learning something, we may often be reluctant to pay attention, perhaps thinking we have better things to do. However, if we continue listening, we may hear something better than we could ever have hoped for. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the mariner in question tells the story of his long journey to the south pole and back, during which he was assaulted by spirits and saved by angels, to a guest from a nearby wedding. This wedding-guest is very reluctant to listen to the mariner’s awesome tale. He refuses to treat the story very seriously- at first. However, throughout this story, the guest pays more and more attention to the story. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the wedding-guest goes from an oblivious partier to a wise, solemn listener, believing the mariner’s tale, and at the end of the story learns a valuable lesson.
When the mariner first stops the wedding-guest, the wedding-guest is reluctant and even gets angry when he has to listen to the tale. As the mariner stops the wedding-guest, the guest replies that he would rather go to the wedding than listen. The mariner transfixes him with his eye, and some supernatural power forces the guest to listen. Soon, he becomes angry that he must listen to this story. The wedding-guest first says, “The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide/and I am next of kin/the guests are met, the feast is set/may'st hear the merry din” (Page 5). Later in the story, Coleridge describes, “The wedding-guest here beat his breast/for he heard the loud bassoon” (Page 6). These quotes show that the would-be guest is becoming angry about missing the wedding. The phrase ‘he beat his breast’ means something like ‘he raged. ‘He [raged that he had to listen to the tale] yet he cannot choose but hear’. However, he must listen to the rest of the story.
The wedding-guest proves he is listening to the story when he is worried the mariner is a ghost or spirit. As the mariner’s story gets to a more supernatural point, involving the incarnations of death and life-in-death, the guest becomes worried that the mariner is inhuman. "I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand, so brown." The mariner responds, “Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!/This body dropt not down.”(Page 12). The wedding-guest, however angry he was earlier, now proves he was paying attention by worrying that the mariner was actually a dead body reanimated, or a spirit, or some other supernatural being. This passage shows two things. First, it shows how the guest was listening and not just ignoring the tale. Second, it shows how the guest believes the mariner. After reassuring the wedding-guest, the mariner moves on with his tale.
At the end of the story, the wedding-guest finally has a sense of reverence for the Mariner’s experience. The mariner and the guest leave and Coleridge writes, “[The wedding-guest] went like one that hath been stunned/and is of sense forlorn/a sadder and wiser man/he rose the morrow morn” (Page 23). As the mariner finishes his tale, the guest leaves in awe (‘like one that hath been stunned’) and was finally reverent about the experience. Through this story, the wedding-guest, who at the start didn’t want to listen, becomes wise and sad at the end.
Though he started out irreverent, the wedding-guest eventually respects the mariner’s story: he started out angry that he had to listen and miss the wedding, but then he proved he was paying attention with his worry about the mariner. Finally, as the story comes to a close, the wedding-guest is humbled by the mariner. The wedding-guest had forced upon him this story, but instead of just ignoring it completely, he took what he learned to heart, believing it even through the fantasy, and that is very admirable.
By Ben Domine
