Themes or Central Ideas In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

In literature, themes, or central ideas, can be found in anything that can be read. Whether it is a poem or a short story, the themes can always be found. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, there are many themes that can be found throughout the entire poem. Two of these are retribution and the importance of storytelling. Both of which are going to be talked about today.

The Story

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” takes place on a ship.

There is a wedding happening and three young gentlemen are having the time of their lives, when they are approached by a man, who is called the Mariner. The Mariner begins to tell his story of what happened to him long ago on what now seems to be a ghost ship. Shocked and confused, the young gentlemen try to escape the tale of the Mariner, but to no luck.

The Mariner tells his story of being lost at sea with his crew on his ship.

Stranded for days with little to no drinking water, they come across a bird, which the Mariner ends up killing. This bird was looked at as good luck, as the crew knew that if there was life out in the cold ice that they were stuck in, that they too could live through this rough time. But then things begin to lighten up. Believing that the bird was now bad luck, the men continue on their journey of survival.

Now things end up for the worse.

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With no drinking water left, the Mariners crew dies, all except him. He lives on and even hallucinates lights in the sky and things in the water, as there’s no wind for his ship to move he’s stranded where he is. Wishing for death the Mariner comes across more creatures in the water. He “blesses” them in his heart, leading the “curse” that was over his ship for killing the bird to leave, the wind picks up and the ship begins the journey back home. Before this it actually rained, so the Mariner was able to live and survive the journey back home.

But what is even stranger is that the dead crew men sort of get possessed by good spirits, or what the Mariner calls angels, and the dead crew actually begins to help the Mariner with the ship, setting sails and getting things ready. The Mariner is finally able to go back home where he meets three people on a boat who go out to rescue him. It’s at this time that the Mariner is rescued that his ship sinks down to the bottom of the ocean. The other men on the boat were so terrified that they believed the Mariner to be a devil.

With the Mariner’s story told, the three gentlemen are stunned and don’t know what to believe. Although they do think that the Mariner is a ghost himself, the Mariner now leaves, wanting to pray after he got the story off of his chest. This leaves the men to go party, then to wake up in the morning feeling wiser but yet sadder then they were before.

Themes

With this story being told, one of the themes that can be read is retribution. Retribution is, by definition, “punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act”. Retribution is something that can be found in this poem because of what the Mariner did. The bird that was looked at as good luck was shot and killed by himself. This act lead to what was called the “curse” over the ship and to what happened to both his crew and his boat that he loved.

The other theme that can be found is one of storytelling. In the poem the Mariner feels a sort of pain in his chest when he has non’t told his ghost story for a while. Because of this, he frequently has to tell his story to whoever he can, and in the poem his latest victims were a trio of men who were at a party.

Themes can be found in all of literature. A prime example would be that of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He mostly talks about the themes of retribution and of the helpfulness of storytelling along with being able to get things off of ones chest. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is able to tell the themes of retribution and of storytelling through his wonderful poem. This is which is important to literature and poem writing.