The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a ballad, an oral form typical of the Middle Ages, but in the Lyrical Ballads we have a deviation from tradition because the ballad is no longer oral but it is written.

It is a long ballad, it is organized in seven section; each section is accompanied by a short summary.

It is also interesting to notice that seven is a symbolic number, which deals with the number of days during which God created the Universe; as a matter of fact ballads refers to the Middle Ages, a period in which religion was one of the most important values for the folk.

 

Starting from the title, what strikes the attention of the reader is the archaic use of the language ("ancient mariner") that let immediately the reader create an imaginary setting.

The ballad is called "rime", which seems to be something connected with poetry.

 

The argument is a short summery with the function of recreating the setting: it speaks of the weather conditions and the attention is focused on something strange that happened so that the reader is curios to get information on the adventure.

 

PART 1

 

The first section starts with the ancient mariner who meets three men who are going to a weeding and he stops one of them. The man asks the mariner the reason why he has been stopped.

The mariner starts to be characterized from the category of the physical appearance: he has a "long grey bear" and "glittering eye", he is just sketched (as it happens in traditional ballads characters are just sketched ). 

Speaking of the phonological level, right from the first stanza the reader can hear the high density of deviation used by the poet.

Language devices on the phonological level are an other typical feature of traditional ballads, since they were transmitted orally, the musicality helps the memorization. 

The narrator provides the reader also with a piece of information about the wedding guest: he is a member of the bride's family . The celebration has already started (the expression  "the guests are met, the feast is set" in few words synthetizes the events, thanks also to the alliterations of the sound /s/ and /t/ ) and the characters can hear the noise of happiness .

The wedding guest knows that he must go but it seems as if there were something that keeps him there, he does not feel free to go.

Moreover the ancient mariner "holds him with his skinny hand"; the expression which convey the mariner's physical appearance seem almost to recall a ghostly figure. He starts telling the guest his story but the guest precipitously interrupts him, he call the mariner "grey-beard loon" (the narrator insists in the articular of the bear) and he takes off his hand (inversion of the normal word order which function is to underline the adverb "eftsoons").

The wedding guest takes off the hand but the narrator says the mariner "holds him with the glittering eye"; again the reader can perceive a strange strength, almost supernatural, that does not allow the guest to go away.

There is a simile: he listens (to listen is a voluntary act) "like a three years' child", it means that any rational power is lost and he is kept by emotions, he couldn't but stop, the mariner has a strange power on him.

In the following stanza the verb "to listen" is substituted by the verb "to hear" which is a verb of perception, moreover the narrator provides further elements in the description of the setting (the wedding guest is sat on a stone) and in the characterization of the ancient mariner ("the bright-eyed Mariner").

The deviation on the phonological level are always present in order to stick into the reader's mind the ballad and the most important parts.

After that the mariner continues telling his story: the rythm is very speed and it seems to recreate the speed of the ship at the start of the voyage, thanks also to the anaphoric construction "below...below...below"; it sounds as if the reader were hearing the sound of the waves.

After that the marines tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and weather; the use of personification for the Sun is present, "the Sun came upon the left", Sun, in contrast with the Moon, represents rationality, on the contrary the Moon stands for instincts, irrationality and emotions.

The wedding guest is still listening to the mariner, even if he heard the "loud bassoon", which is an onomatopoeic sound that seems ti recreate the sound of the instrument, thanks to the open vowel sounds.

Once again the narrator provides further elements useful in the construction of the setting; the bride is walking into the hall and the wedding guest feels guilty because he is unable to stop hearing the ancient mariner ("he cannot choose but hear"). The guest is enchanted by the mariner, once again the strange power he has on the guest come to surface.

Moreover the merchant is  described as "bright-eyed"; the narrator provides the reader with few details in order to allow him not to get lost in the narration.

Suddenly the weather conditions get worse: "the Storm- blast came" (nature is always personified); the stanza which describes the situation presents a deviation in the structure, it is no longer a quatrain but a sextet and the rythm conveys the reader the idea that the ship is going less far, in opposition with the stanza which described the start of the voyage.

The uses adjectives like "fast" and "blast" (consonance) in order to help the reader in creating a mental picture of the scene.

In the following stanza the strong anaphoric construction gives more emphasis to the description of the weather conditions; it came mist, snow and ice "as green as emerald" (simile). The alliteration of  /ai/  sounds ("ice", "high", "by") conveys the sense of suffering, fear and solitude of the people on the ship; it seems as f they were alone ("Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken", again anaphoric construction and internal rime).

The narrator insists in particular on the ice, which was everywhere; the anaphoric construction sticks into the readers mind the word ice,which is a metaphor for the inability of communicate, for the sense of solitude and isolation so that nature becomes a reflection of the marines' inner situation.  Moreover the use of onomatopoeic verbs like "cracked", "growled", "roared" and "howled" are useful to make the reader feel as if he were present on the scene.

Suddenly an Albatross got near the ship, through the fog,  it was received with great joy and hospitality by the crew, they fed the bird .

The bird seems to be a sign from God ( here the theme of religion becomes more explicit and stronger. As a matter of fact during the Middle Ages, when ballads were sang, religion was a basic element on everyday life).

The weather got better and the crew thought it was due to the presence of the Albatross who follows the ship every day.

The bird followed the ship for nine days  "in mist or cloud, on mast or shroud", the moon (symbol of irrationality) sent a lot of light around; the wedding guest feels that there is something strange, unreal and he hopes that God will save the mariner from the fiends and the plague,which are metaphor for the problems that afflicts the mariner, he looks like he were death (the reader has got this impression since the ballad started when the narrator said the mariner had a long grey beard, a skinny hand...).

At the end the mariner confesses his sin: he killed the Albatross with his crossbow (consonance).

The voyage by sea is metaphorically a voyage into the inner nature of the self who had lost his balance and tries to attribute to external causes this loss but the causes of a sin cannot be found outside the self.