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Death theme in literature 123help
Death theme in literature
Essay ons.t.coleridge as a poet
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Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner
In Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner the reader finds an enduring tale. Although the poem is nearly 200 years old it remains a popular piece by way of the novel juxtapositions and contradictions that are so eloquently described that the reader is both drawn in by the logic of the descriptions as well as fascinated by the complete unreality depicted in the poem. It is highly unlikely anyone could claim an understanding of the events told by the Ancient Mariner—the reader today, as well as in Coleridge’s time is akin to the man in the wedding party, listening to the Mariner’s tale with a mix of horror, astonishment and disbelief. However, also like this man we are compelled to continue reading (in his case listening) to the story and are left changed by it. Today’s reader is more profoundly affected by the intricacies of Coleridge’s ideas than the man confronted by an eerie old man in the poem. This reader found the juxtaposition of living versus non-living things particularly gruesome and compelling for it is the backbone of this and any horror(ific) story.
The poem begins by putting into conversation the Ancient Mariner, one already near death and the young wedding guest. The mariner is at points in the poem feared to be one already among the dead or spirit world as he tells his tale of a most surreal and fatal sea passage, whereas Coleridge chooses a wedding, an event where two lives are just beginning as one, and picks a young man who is described as listening to the story “like a three-years’ child.” (Line 19) A three year old being one who has just begun his life. By setting this scene with these two characters, Coleridge has already contrasted elements of t...
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...ot and come back to life to perform their functions, then die again and rise up once more
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is swollen with imagery of life, lifelessness, and death but not with any traditional descriptions. Coleridge is able to change the nature of death and life to fit his needs and the needs of his story. At the conclusion of the poem we the reader and the wedding guest are left “sadder and a wiser man” (Line 624) with lesson of what can happen if you are not good to your fellow creatures. While this moral holds true to the cause of the curse through the death of the Albatross it seems a strange ending to a much more morbid story. The blurring and crossing over of concrete concept is the real gift the reader is left to ponder. This talent for manipulation adds to the attraction of the poem and to the lengthened popularity of Coleridge’s works.
The reader might not understand how to interpret the stanza; they could interpret however they wanted to. Coleridge placed the glosses in so that the reader would understand the Mariner woke up and realized that he had done his penance. These...
What do these three people have in common? A child dropped off for his first day of kindergarten, a girl receiving her driver’s license and a boy preparing to move out for his first year of university. The answer: they have crossed the liminal stage and entered a new phase of life. Liminality, or the liminal stage, a term coined by University of Chicago anthropologist Victor Turner, is the transitional stage one crosses as they pass through into a new stage of life. Ambiguity fills this indeterminate period as one attempts to find their place, role and status at home or in life, all while on the outside looking in. From this outsider’s point of view, many artists have addressed serious matters such as religion, societal constructs and the individual’s
He describes how he was “Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea!” (232-233). He persistently uses the word “alone” to explain his emotion during the situation, highlighting the fact that there was absolutely no one to guide him, and it was most likely that he would die alone in the sea. By enforcing the fact that the Mariner was so “alone”, Coleridge builds suspense by leading the reader to ponder how the Mariner survived to tell his story to the wedding guest. Being “alone” is an extremely terrifying thought, especially if one were stranded in the “wide, wide sea”, so connecting this common association of the word alone to the Mariner’s fear, Coleridge alerts the reader to how hopeless his situation
The main theme of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem is to learn from your mistakes. After telling his tale to the Wedding Guest, the Ancient Mariner realized that the murder of the Albatross was a mistake and lived a life of penance. The act of murder was an impulsive act because the Mariner felt threatened by the Albatross their actions. The deaths of both birds brought about memories from both the Ancient Mariner and Hagar which they shared with other people, the Wedding Guest and Murray F. Lees. These memories help them to realize the mistakes they made. Through their own personal recollections, the Ancient Mariner and Hagar both achieved a better understanding of their lives and in turn were able to die with a sense of contentment and relief.
In the poem, Coleridge portrays nature as wild and untamed; he uses a loose meter that varies between tetrameter and trimeter to reflect the mental and physical actions playing out in the stanzas. For example, when the “storm-blast came” and blew the ship “southward” into the “mist and snow” there is a stanza describing the “sloping masts” of the ship as the storm took control of the boat. This stanza not only reflects the wild and untamed nature of the storm through the freer verse, which makes the rhyme scheme almost feel uncontrollable, but also through the length of the stanza itself, as it is two lines longer than the previous and following stanza. Coleridge uses the same technique when presenting the mental state of the characters – specifically the Mariner’s inner turmoil as his punishment for his crimes against nature are playing out. In an attempt to control nature, the Mariner shoots an Albatross that the crew had “hailed…in God’s name” and the consequences prove to be disastrous for him as he finds himself turned away from nature. The effect it has on the Mariner is instant as Coleridge extends the stanza describing the Mariner’s “hellish thing” to six lines mirroring his inner turmoil. The Mariner’s punishment continues and due to the Romantic belief in a pantheistic ideal, he finds himself unable to pray
He starts the story immediately with a lot of detail creating the setting of where the mariner is going and to whom the mariner is going to tell his tale. He chooses three men on their way to a wedding and one in particular we know as the “wedding guest.” When we think of a wedding we think of a happy event where two people are united under the grace of god. The mariner stops him from going in this event though and tells him the story, at the end of which he tells him that he doesn't need anything but god to be happy. The detail and emphasis of the wedding symbolizes temporary happiness on earth. The mariner explains that loving god and having him in your life is “Oh sweeter than the marriage feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me” (Coleridge, lines 86-87). Here the mariner is saying that the temporary happiness on earth that one may get from a marriage celebration is nice but it is nowhere near as good as the love of god you get from making a religious transformation. Coleridge explains all of the sing and drinking and happiness going on in the wedding as the mariner is telling the story but in the end the mariner tells the guest that none of that is as good as the love of god. And we can see that wedding guest actually learns something from the story because he decides to not go into the wedding but rather “and now the wedding-guest. Turned from the bridegroom's door. He went ...
The whole cycle begins with the mariner’s crime against nature: the shooting of the albatross. In the story, the mariner betrays nature by shooting the Albatross. This action against nature is rather extreme, for he takes this thought of death lightly. The Albatross, as a representative of nature, means nothing to the Mariner. These thoughts are quickly changed, though, as Nature begins to start the punishment for his crimes commence when there is, "Water, water, everywhere nor any drop to drink." He is punished harshly for killing the symbol of nature that everyone reveres. He is beaten down by the sun with its rays and is taunted by the endless sight of water that he cannot drink. Nature is the force in this poem that has power to decide what is right or wrong and how to deal with the actions.
Mariner (A Discussion of Three Messages in Coleridge’s, Rime of the Ancient Mariner) With the Romantic Era of literature bringing forth a great number of iconic poems and stories, it is no wonder that to this day we still study texts such as these. Romantic poets set in motion a new style of writing and expression, altering how expressive future texts would venture to be. An iconic member of this era, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a widely renowned poet for a number of poems. Possibly his most famous poem of all time, Rime of The Ancient Mariner took a Romantic approach to an epic style story.
...ous allegory represents Christian ideals such as sin, forgiveness, and prayer. In addition, Coleridge’s use of language and form contribute to the message conveyed in the text. The form fluctuates throughout the text by use of different rhyme schemes, loose meter, and stanzas in length varying four to nine lines. The variety of form could be representative the array of interpretations of this text. Coleridge conveys profound religious meaning by using symbolic language with interpretive representations. Although his use of elevated language possibly narrowed the audience, that could have been his intentions due to the complexities of this philosophical poem. In the end, Coleridge’s depiction of the Mariner’s journey ultimately conveys the Christian ideal, which is to love and appreciate all creatures created by God, whether Albatross or snake.
Certainly, ‘Lonely’, unlike ‘Mariner’, relies entirely on the natural world to produce sublime effect. However, Coleridge uses the link between the natural and the supernatural in order to reveal the spiritual to the speaker (Fulford 819). This is similar to the ambiguity of nature in ‘Lonely’. The natural world is simultaneously real and fantastic through metaphoric likening to “never-ending … stars”. (Wordsworth 7-9)
and in? The Ancient Mariner? , we see that Coleridge shows the struggle against the overwhelming forces of nature. It is an important theme for the Romantic poets. Another difference between the two poets is that Wordsworth deals with everyday people from small villages, and while reading the words, I felt as if it was not a poem at all, but a story being told.
As the ancient Mariner described his adventures at sea to the Wedding-Guest, the Guest became saddened because he identified his own selfish ways with those of the Mariner. The mariner told the Guest that he and his ship-mates were lucky because at the beginning of their voyage they had good weather. The mariner only saw what was on the surface -- he did not see the good weather as evidence that Someone was guiding them. Also, when he shot the Albatross, the Mariner did not have any reason for doing so. The Albatross did nothing wrong, yet the Mariner thought nothing of it and without thinking of the significance of the act, he killed the bird. At this, the Guest was reminded of how self-absorbed he, too, was, and the sinful nature of man. At the beginning of the poem he was very much intent on arriving at the wedding on time. He did not care at all about what it was that the Mariner had to tell him; he did not want to be detained even if the Mariner was in trouble. Instead, he spoke rudely to the mariner, calling him a "gray-beard loon", and tried to go on his own way.
However, in the two works by Coleridge, the imagination takes on different roles in each world. In the Ancient Mariner, the imagination is the substance that holds all life together, much like how the millio...
He has to feel a pain in his chest that becomes unbearable until he sees a certain soul that is the right one to tell. No matter what. In the long poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has three lessons about human life: supernatural, pride, and suffering. In “Rime” by Sam Coleridge, the mariner goes through many supernatural events that scare him into submission. Coleridge does a great job of describing the scenery around the boat that the mariner resides in.
According to Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, an allegory is described as a fictional literary narrative or artistic expression that conveys a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more important than, the literal meaning. This is true in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is an allegory that symbolizes the inherent struggle of humans facing the ideas of sin and redemption. In writing this poem, Coleridge spent four months of sustained writing upon his purpose of supposing that supernatural situations are real. This purpose is seen clearly in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", which demonstrates salvation, and the power of sympathetic imagination. The story of the ancient mariner takes place on a sea voyage around the horn of Africa and through the Pacific Ocean to England, which Coleridge uses to symbolize the pass into the spirit world of guilt, retribution, and rebirth.