Coleridge's Actions In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

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“One leak will sink a ship and one sin will destroy a sinner” (Bunyan). Within Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there lies a story of a mariner who will forever be haunted by his actions. On a sail to the South, the Mariner decides to kill the only companion of nature, an albatross, which was presented to his crew. The Mariner took his crossbow and shot the albatross that was thought to bring the wind for the ship to sail. The crew immediately hated him and although they thought for a moment that the bird actually brought the fog and the mist, they still cursed him with the look in their eyes. Days passed with no wind, the ship was stuck in the middle of the sea and the crew remained with no food or water. When they finally saw a ship at a distanced sight, the Mariner’s crew of two hundred men started to drop dead. The Mariner was the only soul left to live in misery for his actions. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the purpose of the Mariner’s character was to display the consequences when one harms or destroys a creation of God. The message that Coleridge exhibits through the Mariner conveys an approach to …show more content…

Coleridge contributes his Christian beliefs within allusions of Jesus Christ being represented by the albatross. Likewise, he paints the repercussions that came to the Mariner after he killed one of God’s creations. Withal, Coleridge includes the most drastic of consequence that came from killing the albatross, the Mariner’s unknown knowledge of his own death. Additionally, Coleridge includes the despairing sight of the Mariner’s crew’s souls leaving to paradise without him. The sin of killing the albatross was the sin that ruined the Mariner’s life, causing him an eternity of guilt carried forever in his lost

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