It is my favourite poem and every time I see somebody characterise it as being primarily about guilt or repentance it surprises me because I've never seen it that way, and I wouldn't like it nearly as much if I did.

For me the poem is about a man who acts without appreciation for life, which leads him to a place of utter despair and suffering, through which he discovers a mystical state of unconditional love for life in any form, and this brings him to redemption.

The mariner had felt guilt and shame quite quickly after shooting the albatross. I think he repented, but it did not do anything to save him, it didn't earn him forgiveness. It was only when he was half driven to madness, wishing for death, that he saw the light reflect off the slimy water snakes and a spring of love gushed from his heart and he blessed them, unaware. That was how he had redeemed himself, by finding beauty in unexpected places.

At the end of the poem, the mariner's final message to the wedding guest is:

"He prayeth well who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best,

All things both great and small:

For the dear God, who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

And so it really surprises me that love is not more commonly identified as the main theme/message of the poem.

Does anybody feel the same way?

  • I think it's really important to remember that the poem is sold as an 'Ancient' thing that has been discovered and has commentary by an imaginary scholar un the margins who 'interprets' it for us as well. So we have a tale about a mariner, told by th mariner to a wedding guest, who in turn is the focal.character of that narrative. We are o. The outside being asked to interpret the wedding guest, the mariner, the scholar AND the intentions of Coleridge.

    The Imagination is central.to the worldview of the early Romantics, Colerisge in particular (unlike Words worth who is much more memory focused).

    Coleridge WANTS us to imagine possible meanings.

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  • Why are we infecting the humanities with this kind of zero sum analysis? A poem can be equivocal and have multiple interpretations, does it have to be “I crunched the numbers and theme x only comes up a meagre 12.567% of the text”? I agree that the ecological reading (“unconditional love”) is very rich but it is also undeniably a resonant, haunting depiction of guilt.

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    Well it's just my opinion about it of course, I just felt like it was implied and so adding "for me personally" would be unnecessary

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  • It has years since I have read this poem. I also loved it way back then. Thank you for your well written argument. I agree wholeheartedly.

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  • The poem concludes with the Mariner leaving to go tell the story again the next night. Those are great lines about love you cite but how do they connect to anywhere else in the poem?

    They're sailing. An albatross seems to be a cause for keeping the ship moving, negotiating an almost other-worldly, cold climate. Sailors feed the albatross, a mascot or heavenly presence. The mariner kills it. Another environment, otherworldly, but hot and without wind or rain. Crew dies. Slimy snakes seen as not bad anymore. Mariner lands, tells his story.

    I don't connect in all this a beloved, romance, God's loving forgiveness.

    It's been years since I read this. Coleridge doesn't espouse traditional faith nor is he writer of romance. Nature....very much caught up in that; see the 3 conversational lyrics.

    Mariner strikes me as more a Gothic, supernatural tale.

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  • Hi, I am just an undergrad, and we studied this poem recentrly, and yes I agree with you that the final message can be read/considered like a proto-ecologist message. As he says about all creatures, "He made and loveth all." meaning He-God, he made all creatures and all must be loved. It is true that the first part is heavy on guilt and despair, but I think at the end we can find the main point that the mariner wanted to convey.

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  • It's not about anything. I mean, it is, he tries to put a moral in it, but it doesn't really work. It's primarily an amazing, chilling story. Any moral about kindness, or about looking after the natural world, is only half-supported by the events of the tale.

    Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it – it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgement the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son.

    Coleridge, Table Talk

    Edit: I extended my own comment, lengthened the quotation and added the source

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