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For Monday: Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Parts V-VII



Be sure to finish the poem for Monday, or ideally, read it again. The poem makes more sense (or is more familiar, at least) if you read it with an awareness of what's generally going on. Then you can focus on the small details, and hear the strange music of the poem. As with any longer poem, there's simply too much to take in at once--or twice--or fifty times (I've been reading this poem since 1994, when I first picked it up, and am still rethinking it!). 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In many ways, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner mirrors J.M. Turner's later painting, The Slave Ship that we viewed in class (here's the post about it below: British Literature from 1800, "Monsters and Madmen" (Fall 2021): Links for Turner's Slave Ship (1840) (grassobrit2.blogspot.com)). How might both works be trying to disguise their message underneath sublime imagery and general misdirection? Do you think Coleridge could also have an anti-slavery or humanitarian message in his poem (it was written in 1798, as the abolitionist movement was nearing its height). 

Q2: When the curse is finally lifted and the wind blows the ship toward the shore, the Mariner is awarethat he will never be completely safe. As he observes, he is "Like one, that on a lonesome road/Doth walk in fear and dread...Because he knows, a frightful fiend/Doth close behind him tread." If this is a poem about his 'sin' against nature, and he is forgiven by acknowledging the beauty of nature, why is he still haunted? What is still pursuing him?

Q3: Even though the Mariner has been spared, the Hermit thinks he looks like a devil or something inhuman, and the Wedding Guest fears he's a corpse. Why does everyone else sees him as a monster, yet he claims to be a holy person, who prefers "To walk together to the kirk [church],/With a goodly company!"? Is it significant that he looks like a Life-In-Death himself?

Q4: The moral of this poem has been roundly criticized over the years, since the poem seems too long and complicated to have such a succinct (and simplistic?) moral. Do you think his message that "He prayeth best, who loveth best/All things both great and small" is the true moral of the poem? Is that what the Mariner has learned, and is trying to teach the Wedding Guest? And if so, why will the Guest rise "A Sadder and a wiser man...the morrow morn"? 

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