46 pages • 1 hour read
Samuel ColeridgeThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1798A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
The Ancient Mariner
The Ancient Mariner is unnaturally old, with skinny, deeply-tanned limbs and a “long grey beard and […] glittering eye” (1). He used to be a sailor and, during a voyage when he was younger, he and the crew he was a part of become stranded at the South Pole. When an albatross appears, the ice breaks and the ship is freed. The Mariner makes a friend of the bird but then shoots and kills it.
The other crew members are angry with the Mariner at first, as they think the bird a good omen, after which they change their minds as they come to believe that it was the bird (and, by extension, Nature) that had caused their bad luck. However, by killing the bird, the Mariner has triggered a series of events that causes the cosmos to rise up against him and his shipmates. His fellow crew members blame him and he is punished for his crime by Life-in-Death. As his crew dies, the Mariner is left to live on with what he has done. It is only when he comes to accept the beauty of all of God’s creatures, and that he must be respectful towards them, that he is partially forgiven for killing the albatross. This is not the end of his penance, though. Despite his new awareness, the Mariner is doomed to tell his story to strangers far and wide and instruct them on the best way to live their lives. Prior to each time he is to tell his story, he suffers a physical agony that ends only once the story is finished. In many ways, the Mariner personifies a multitude of aspects of Romantic-era poetry, including individualism and the “common man.”
The Wedding Guest
The Wedding Guest is one of three men on their way to a wedding celebration, and we are given the impression that he is related to the bridegroom. The Guest is stopped by the Mariner and, despite a number of attempts to get away, is made to sit and listen to the Mariner’s story. At one point, on hearing the instruments playing at the party, he cries out, wanting to be part of the revelry. This moves the character of the Wedding Guest toward Neoclassicist thought and art, which posits that characteristics of human behavior are universal. The Guest longs to be part of the collective cry at the wedding events, but nonetheless feels compelled to stay and hear the Mariner’s tale. Once the story is finished, the Wedding Guest is no longer interested in attending the party and goes home to think about the Mariner and his story. He wakes up the next morning “a sadder and wiser man” (28).
The Sailors
The sailors are 200 men who are on the ship with the Mariner Following a storm, they are stuck at the South Pole. The Mariner and the Sailors are freed from the ice floes after an albatross lands on their ship. The Sailors believe the bird to be a good omen and feed it. They are horrified when it is killed by the Mariner for no apparent reason. After, the sailors suffer terribly from the heat; as they are dying from thirst, they hang the corpse of the albatross around the Mariner's neck. When Death wins the souls of the sailors in his gambling game with Life-in-Death, they all fall on to the deck of the ship, dead. Their souls leave, but their bodies do not rot and remain lying on the deck of the ship with their eyes open. When the rain returns, angels bring the sailors back to life and their reanimated corpses aid in the punishment of the Mariner. As the ship reaches the harbor, the sailors once more curse the Mariner before their souls again leave their bodies.
Life-in-Death
Life-in-Death arrives in a tattered ghost ship, along with Death, and wins the Mariner's soul during a dice game. Life-in-Death is identified as female; she is described as beautiful, with white skin, yellow hair, and red lips. She only features in the poem for a short time, but has a large impact on both the Mariner and the poem’s narrative. Life-in-Death keeps the Mariner in a kind of limbo, unable to pray or die until he has completed his penance (the Mariner is largely in this same state when he encounters the Wedding Guest).
The First Voice and Second Voice
The First Voice and Second Voice are introduced at the end of Part 4 and continue into the beginning of Part 7. The Mariner hears the First Voice when the ship lurches forward and he falls and is knocked unconscious. The First Voice tells him that he has enraged a spirit that loved the albatross; in keeping with Romantic-era poetry’s love of, and for, nature, it’s fair to hypothesize that this is First Voice could be nature personified.
The Second Voice is described by Coleridge as being "[a]s soft as honey-dew” and more knowledgeable than the First Voice (18). The Second Voice tells the First Voice that the Mariner will pay dearly for his crime, eluding to the Mariner’s ultimate fate of having to re-tell what has happened to him over and over. Even though the First Voice tells the Second Voice that the Mariner has enraged a spirit by killing the albatross, the latter explains that it is the moon and the air, and not the spirit itself, that move the ship. Such omniscient understanding makes it at least possible to perceive this second voice as being the voice of the Christian God.
The Hermit
The Hermit is one of three people who aids in the rescue the Mariner, along with the Pilot and the Pilot’s Boy. The Hermit lives as a recluse and prays three times a day. The Hermit is on the boat because "He loves to talk with Marineres / That come from a far contree” (24). The Mariner believes the Hermit to be a holy man and tells the Hermit his story, then asking the Hermit to grant the Mariner absolution for the sins the Mariner has committed.
