Going from a young, nieve, and questioning man, his life experiences at sea teach him to be thoughtful of his friends and to keep them close to him.
We will face hardship and pain, but as soon as death becomes an escape you have achieved true cowardice - Cal Currier. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samual Tayler Coleridge, a mariner tells a story about his epic adventure and the lessons he learned along the way. Going from a young, nieve, and questioning man, his life experiences at sea teach him to be thoughtful of his friends and to keep them close.
At the beginning of the story, the mariner is ignorant of the people around him and what they mean to him. Going against what the people around him advised him to do, he continues down an unfavorable path. There is a ship with 200 sailors on it and the ship sails down to Antarctica and an albatross finds them. The albatross sticks around and eventually becomes their friend.Coleridge writes, “And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the birdThat made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow! ” The mariner shoots the albatross, on a whim, with his crossbow. After which the wing dies and the fog come in implicating bad luck after the death of the mariner. His crew mates get angry at him and hang the albatross around his neck to shame him.
On their way back home, the mariner and the rest of the crew get caught in the doldrums. They have no water and no food And are stranded there for weeks before they see anything. What they see is a ship sailing towards them with no wind in its sails and the hull rotted away. The ship was a ghost ship and was sailing towards them from across the doldrums.
Coleridge writes, “Four times fifty living men, /(And I heard nor sigh nor groan) /With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, /They dropped down one by one.
All of the crew and the captain all drop to the floor, dead as a sack of flour. Seeing all his friends die at once made the mariner sure that it was evil spirits that did this. He felt responsible for the death of his comrades because of the albatross’s death had brought with it bad luck. He also wishes his action hedent killed so many of his friends and crew. After this, the mariner is stranded with just enough water from the sky and enough food from unknown sources to stay alive for the next few weeks.
The mariner learns to respect people and nature, and keep them in mind when making his decisions. After weeks of wallowing in his own despair the mariner looks upon ugly creatures and sees their true beauty. The spirits then feel that he has had enough and the wind picks up, the doldrums disappear and something strange starts to happen:
“They groaned, they stirr'd, they all uprose, / Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; / It had been strange, even in a dream, / To have seen those dead men rise.”
His dead friends rise to form the deck and he thinks they are alive. But he soon realizes that they are just spirits inhabiting their bodies to man the ship so it would keep moving and. He felt the sense of loss yet again and felt truly alone again. The mariner learned about friendship and loss in one fell swoop,.He changed from a foolish to a wise man over 2 months.
After this ordeal the Mariner continues to live his life traveling the world, as a changed man. He tells his story to those who will hear and passes on the lessons he learned. The Mariner made many mistakes and triumphed in the face of other worldly beings. He learned lesson after lesson, but he never lost hope.(He actually did once.) The End!!!
