Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’
The poem highlights a basic truth about morality, which is that penance is, simply put, not enjoyable. We don't like to voluntarily undertake it because it seems an unnecessary burden. If we ask for forgiveness for our wrongs, and if we're truly forgiven, why do we have to do penance for our actions? Coleridge's poem shows us the reason: Penance is both binding and liberating. In fact, only in being bound to our own action through penance can we be freed from it.
Published in the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is largely the first person narrative of the mariner as told to a wedding guest. The mariner stops one of three wedding guests to tell him the events that followed by his killing of an albatross.
The poem is split into seven parts, and the mariner endures a seven-day torment in the poem. The number echoes the seven days of creation. Not only is the poem a tale of a man made anew, but it also deals with man's communion with the rest of creation.
There is a threefold death in the albatross; most obviously, it is the death of an innocent creature, but it also points to the killing of Christ as the crew forces the mariner to wear the albatross around his neck in place of a cross. To this point, the death of the albatross is also the spiritual death of the mariner himself, and he is both physically and spiritually weighed down by the burden of his sin.
We often hear that the opposite of love is not hatred but rather indifference. The mariner demonstrates himself lacking in love through his senseless act. Though not deliberately malicious, his act is careless, and the later events of the poem painfully guide his soul through the process of learning to love.
This prayer for all or nothing counters the mariner's half-waking, half-sleeping state. It also counters the previous state between life and death on the ship. The prayer is the antithesis of the initial lukewarm indifference, neither love nor hate, that led the mariner to kill the albatross.
When the ship goes down, the mariner is saved by a boat with three people: the Pilot, the Pilot's son, and the Hermit, whom he admires for his holiness and proximity to nature. It is to the Hermit that the mariner first tells his tale; his telling comes out in agony and leaves him free on its conclusion. Now and again, his heart burns with a need to tell the tale to another and won't rest until the tale is done.
There is no rule which demands that the mariner tell his tale repeatedly, but love compels him to do so out of concern for his fellow creatures. Understanding the consequences of his own mistake, he can be a more effective witness in turning others from a similar route.
Not everyone needs to hear the tale. He stops one of three, and the wedding guest is arrested by a particular gleam in the mariner's eye which does not arrest the others. Pulled from the ordinary course of his life, the wedding guest graciously listens to the tale just as the mariner graciously tells it. The wedding guest is left "a sadder and a wiser man" on rising the next day.
Following his return to land, the mariner is continually offered opportunities to atone for his sin; these are clearly marked as channels of grace and ways in which God is at work in his life. He is saved from the ship by three people, and at the start of the poem, he is compelled to stop one of three.
Both the opening and close of the poem, or the first and most recent tellings of his tale, carry the symbolism of the Trinity. Perfect union with God, however, is not possible in this life; while he is restored to grace, the mariner must spend the rest of his life working to mirror God on earth, loving others as He loves them.
The penance of retelling his tale does not mean he cannot escape from his sin. Rather, it liberates him by binding him to the deed. Through the retelling, the deed assumes a redemptive nature. His penance mirrors the sin—in killing a creature out of indifference, he will now spend his life, out of love for others, inspiring others to love well.
