MB UNIUD

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

Analysis page 150.

The ballad is organized in seven parts.

I am going to analyze in the fourth part.

The Wedding-Guest is speaking at the beginning; he says that he is scared of the mariner (I fear thee, ancient Mariner) and describes him (skinny hand, art long, and lank, and brown, glittering eye, skinny hand, so brown).

At line 7 you can find the voice of the mariner, he addresses the Wedding-Guest with the use of  the imperative; he repeat the word alone twice and also the repetition of wide  underlines the mariner's suffering.

From line 13 to line 16 we can find the story of the crew: the mariner is alive, but the others are dead. Here you can find an opposition between death (the crew) and the living fauna of the sea.

The mariner is sad because animals are alive and his crew is dead, we can find a sense of nausea: looked upon the rotting sea, and drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck and there the dead men lay.

At line 21 you can find religious code (I looked to heaven, and tried to pray) and also a curse (But or ever a prayer had gusht, a wicked whisper came): prayers cannot help him.

Then you can understand the mariner's desperation: closed my lids, and kept them close, and the balls like pulses beat; for the sky and the sea and the sea and the sky lay like a load on my weary eye, and the dead were at my feet.

Here you can find a chiasm: for the sky and the sea and the sea and the sky.

The mariner looks at the bodies and their friends and they look with which they looked on me had never passed away. They appear as if they were alive.

The mariner is the only one person alive and he has to live only with his dead crew as if it were a malediction: an orphan's curse would drag to Hell a spirit from on high; but oh! more horrible than that is a curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, and yet I could not die. Maybe he wants to dye, but he cannot.

Now the speaking voice talks about the Moon: the moving Moon went up the sky, and no where did abide: softly she was going up, and a star or two beside. There is an opposition between the Moon and the mariner's situation: the Moon is beautiful, and he is with deaths and the charmed water burnt always a still and awful red. Red colour recalls the colour of blood and death.

In the water the speaking voice can see the water-snakes: they moved in tracks of shining white, and when they reared, the elfish light fell off in hoary flakes. They can move and the crew can only stand still.

The creatures are beautiful and the mariner understands it: he blesses them and at the same time his malediction goes away (The self same moment I could pray; and from my neck so free the Albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea).