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.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6 Summary
The First Voice and Second Voice continue their conversation, explaining that nature and the supernatural are working together to sail the Mariner home, so that he can continue with the next stage of his penance. They fly away: “Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high, / Or we shall be belated: / For slow and slow that ship will go, / When the Marinere’s trance is abated” (19). They leave with the Mariner still in his trance.
After they have left, the Mariner wakes up. He is lying beside the dead Sailors. His curse returns for a moment and he is unable to pray. As quickly as the curse arrives, however, it disappears again. The Mariner contemplates nature and the sea as a light breeze begins to blow: “It rais’d my hair, it fann’d my cheek, / Like a meadow-gale of spring - / It mingled strangely with my fears, / Yet it felt like a welcoming” (20). The breeze carries the ship forward until the Mariner cries out happily as he sees his homeland in front of him. As the ship arrives in the harbor, the angels fly away quietly.
The Mariner hears the sound of oars and sees a small boat carrying a Pilot, his Boy, and a Hermit. He believes that the Hermit is a man of God, who will be able to grant the Mariner absolution from his sin of killing the albatross: “He [the Hermit] singeth loud his godly hymns / That he makes in the wood. / He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away / The Albatross’s blood” (24).
Part 6 Analysis
In Part 6, the speech of the First Voice and Second Voice is structured like dialogue in a play, lending Coleridge’s poem some elements of prose/drama. The Voices indicate that the Mariner is not wholly absolved and must face further punishment. He loses his ability to pray once more but this inability is healed again through the eyes, and by observation of nature’s beauty. As both voices leave, the Second Voice urges the First: "Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! / Or we shall be belated” (19).
Although “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is very visual, sounds are also important: noises from the wedding interrupt the Mariner’s story, there is terrible silence when thirst causes the Mariner and the sailors to lose their ability to speak, and the angels sing like a choir as they guide the Mariner’s boat towards his homeland. Sound is particularly important in this part of the poem; the Mariner can hear the Voices but cannot see them. The Mariner also hears his rescuers in the Pilot’s boat before he sees them. Hearing before seeing can be construed as the need for the Mariner to place his belief in something prior to the eyes being to prove that thing’s existence; this is especially important in relation to the theological, as in order to believe, one must do so without visual proof. By coupling nature and God, the proof of the latter’s existence becomes witnessing the former in its genuine state: that of the work of God.
The Mariner approaches his homeland as 200 angels—one for each of the dead sailors—guide the ship safely to land. The angels also attract the Mariner’s rescuers: the Pilot, the Pilot’s Boy, and the Hermit. When the angels leave the bodies of the dead sailors, rather than singing, as they have before, they communicate only visually. When the Mariner sees the Hermit aboard the small boat, he believes he has seen the man who can absolve him of his sin.
