The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

1. I can identify two storylines: one is the present of the poem, when a sailor stops a man, who is going to a wedding-feast; the other is the storyline of the sailor's tale that speaks about a journey that the sailor had done.

2. The figure of the Mariner is not described in detail: he is old, he has a grey beard and a "glittering eye". The traits are the only mentioned in the ballad.

The old man strikes me as an idealized figure of an old sailor, almost a fantastic figure, but in the context where he is set he seems to be real.

3. At the beginning of the journey the sun "shone bright...higher and higher every day". One day a storm was broken and "came both mist and snow" and "the ice was all between".

The sun, the storm and the ice are personified.

Nature is presented both in a realistic and in a symbolic way, because the change of climate into a colder one is realistic for a ship which is moving toward the South Pole. But, at the same time, the use of personalization suggests the idea that nature as a symbolic function.

4. The coming of the albatross, that leads the ship out of the ice, is outside the natural order of things.

The Mariner shoots the albatross also if it was his rescuer; this is the more striking contrast between reality and the supernatural.