The Ancient Mariner - By Eve Kavanaugh
Life is a gift, it's a vivacious gift that some people can only learn the hard way. In the epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the author takes you through the journey where the Ancient Mariner learns that his actions have consequences. The ancient Mariner has many hardships in this story. Throughout the story the ancient mariner had to learn to overcome and face his consequences for his wrongful and careless actions.
Before the Mariner truly knew right from wrong, he shoots the Albatross out of pure recklessness. The ancient Mariner’s story starts with him in a ship with other crew mates. They begin in England and catch too much wind. They are pushed all the way down to the “land of Ice and Snow ''. While relentlessly being pushed down to the land of ice and snow the ancient mariner and his crew comes across a huge albatross. The Mariner thinks that the Albatross is the reason for the strong wind and without telling anyone he decides to kill the bird when it comes upon the boat. “God save thee, ancient Mariner!/ From the fiends, that plague thee thus/Why look’st thou so?-With my crossbow/ I shot the Albatross.” (p. 7). In this stanza the word “fiend” basically means demon, and compares demons with the plague. They use that to describe what it was like when the Mariner shot the albatross with his crossbow and how cruel and unfair it was.
It took a while after shooting the Albatross for the Mariner to realize his grave mistake. After he shot the bird the wind stopped completely and the Mariner and his crew were stranded at sea. They quickly became thirsty and starving. The Mariners crew mates were mad at him and blamed him for everything that happened. So for punishment and shame they hung the dead bird's body over the Mariner's neck as it rotted. Day after day they became more and more hungry. Until one day, the Mariner was overlooking the sea and saw something zipping through the water with no wind. The Mariner was confused but immediately thought it was a ship and called out to it to try to get its attention. Once it started getting closer and closer to the ship the Mariner started to realize that it wasn’t some ordinary boat. The Mariner described the boat as a ghost or skeleton boat because all you could see was the structure of that boat with torn up sails and rotting wood. All of a sudden the mysterious boat stopped and on it was only two of what looked like people. They were both very pale, so pale that they almost looked see through. The author explains these people and calls them Death and Life-in-death. They started gambling for the lives of the Mariners crew mates. Death keeps winning and one by one the men start falling down. “One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,/ Too quick for groan or sigh,/ Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,/ And cursed me with his eye.” (p. 11). The Mariner had to stand there watching everyone on that ship die just waiting for his turn. But fortunately for the Mariner, Life-in-death won one time and that was for his life. After everyone was dead the mariner started to realize that this was his punishment, living. He had to sit there on that boat surrounded by rotting bodies including a dead bird on his neck without any food or water. These were his consequences.
A lot happens after the Mariner’s crew mates deaths. First at the beginning of the story the Mariner sees something in the water, he describes it as some gross green slime and says how disgusting the ocean is. Later on at night, the Mariner sees something glowing in the water and describes them as sea snakes. He starts to realize in this scene how wrong he was earlier and starts to believe that the ocean is actually beautiful. After seeing the beautiful glowing creatures the Mariner gets a sense on how amazing nature can truly be and he starts to appreciate it. The Spirits that cursed him saw how he was changing and slowly the dead rotting bird corpse fell off of the mariner's neck. All of a sudden the boat started to move and before the Mariner knew it, he was racing across the ocean. The boat went on forever that the Mariner lost track of where he even was. Then two wisemen found the Mariner's ship right off the shore from the Mariner’s home land. They see the ship slowly starting to sink and they race in a small boat where they head to the ship to save any passengers. They end up finding only the Mariner upon the ship and they save him. When they get to land the Mariner realizes that he is on his homeland. At the end of the story the Mariner describes how he found out that the adventure truly changed his life and felt a need to share it to the rest of the world. “To walk together to the kirk,/ And all together pray,/ While each to his great Father bends,/ old men, ans babes, and loving friends,/ And youths and maidens gay!.” (p. 22). This quote talks about how the mariner learns to be grateful for what he has and to be happy. He ends up becoming a completely new person and starts to pray more and be thankful.
Throughout the story, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the ancient mariner had to learn to overcome and face his consequences for wrongful actions that he carelessly did. This all really started by the Mariner recklessly killing the bird. The Story showed how much he regretted his action by losing all his food and water and having everyone on the boat except him die. What the author was trying to say in this story is to be grateful for what you have and to be more aware about what you do and that any action, good or bad, has consequences and will eventually catch up to you.
