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Analysis of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 16, 2021 • ( 0 )

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most popular poem. It opened the 1798 first edition of Lyrical Ballads , where it first appeared; Coleridge revised it for the 1800 edition and undertook further revisions later, after his sea voyage to Malta (where he went to recover his health), revisions that include the wonderful marginal glosses. Nevertheless it would probably be better to see the different versions of the poem as essentially true to the same vision and to regard them as presenting that vision with the slight stereoscopic differences that allow us to see depth.

In chapter 14 of his intellectual quasi-autobiography, Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge describes how he and William Wordsworth decided to split the writing of Lyrical Ballads so that Coleridge would do the so-called supernatural poems and Wordsworth the entirely naturalistic ones. The idea was that Wordsworth would treat natural events as though they had the special interest that ballads had traditionally found in the supernatural; while Coleridge would do the converse, which is to say he would treat supernatural events as they would be experienced by psychologically real human beings. Both procedures would meet in the attention they focused on the reactions, psychological and expressive, to be represented (as Wordsworth put it in the preface to the 1800 volume) by “fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation.” For Wordsworth, the vividness of sensation would be communicated by intensity of language in the naturalist poems; for Coleridge, the intensity of language would reflect the vividness of sensation that the supernatural elements would necessarily produce, but it was the sensation of real people and not its supposed supernatural occasions that was the source of the poetic language. Thus, he wrote in perhaps the most famous passage in Biographia Literaria , “it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

In a letter to Wordsworth about the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth had just sent him, Charles Lamb had foreshadowed just this language in a deeply insightful comment on the poem: “I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his Ancient Marinere, a Poet’s Reverie; . . . What new idea is gained by this title but one subversive of all credit—which the tale should force upon us—of its truth!” He goes on, “For me, I was never so affected with any human tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many days. I dislike all the miraculous part of it; but the feelings of the man under the operation of such scenery, dragged me along like Tom Pipe’s magic whistle. . . . the Ancient Marinere undergoes such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was—like the state of a man in a bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is, that all consciousness of personality is gone” (letter dated January 30, 1801). This comment is perhaps the single best thing ever said about the poem. The Ancient Mariner is a man reduced to his simple, bare essence, and that essence is simply the obsessive memory of what brought him to this extremity.

Coleridge later said that Anna Laetitia Barbauld complained of the poem that it had no moral. He replied that he thought “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” ( Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1835]). This is just what Lamb admired about the poem, the sense that it gives, through supernatural means, of being thrown into the world of mortality and loss for obscure and even impenetrable reasons. On one level—this might be the extent to which the poem might seem to have too much of a moral—the reason seems evident: the mariner is guilty of shooting the albatross. But how much of a sin can that be? What is sinful about it is its apparent randomness. He never explains why he shot it, only that after shooting it, everything went wrong.

Why did he shoot it? One reason is that Wordsworth suggested it, giving Coleridge the idea as the central plot point of the poem. This is not a facetious answer: To be alive is to have a story to tell, and to have a story to tell is to be able to point to some moment of arbitrary and shocking deviation from the expected and the norm. The Ancient Mariner himself does not know why he shot the albatross, just as the Wedding Guest cannot make sense of his sudden change of demeanor. Nothing in his character or in his story prepares us for the moment; nothing in his character or in his story has prepared him for it. He has done so with the same unremarkable thoughtlessness of the merchant throwing the shells (the pits) of the dates aside, and it is therefore part of his experience of being thrown into the world of mortality and loss that he is also thrown into the world of guilt.

The remarkable thing about the poem is its analysis of a sense of guilt without a corresponding sense of willful wrongdoing. The mariner is saturated with guilt—but it is important to see that the main content of his guilt is guilt for the punishment that he has brought down on the entire crew. He is guilty because he is being punished, more than he is being punished for his guilt.

The importance of this moral and psychological insight may be underscored by its reappearance in a poem that might at first seem very different—Wordsworth’s Intimations Ode. There Wordsworth sees as the saving moment the sudden sense within the self of “high instincts before which our mortal nature / Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised” (ll. 145–46). Unfounded guilt is the way the mind preserves a sense of itself as in the world but not of the world. In the psychological lexicon of romanticism, it is the original sin of subjectivity itself—that is, a sense of being different from the world that demands one be a part of it. Guilt registers our failure to be a part of the world.

This is why the Ancient Mariner can make the Wedding Guest feel guilty as well. The mariner ends his tale by saying that he recognizes the person he must tell it to. But what has the Wedding Guest done? He desires to be part of the social world, to belong to it fully and happily. There is no albatross in his past. But the mariner’s tale fills the guest with fear and wonder and makes it impossible for him to feel unquestioningly of the world any more. He has been submitted to the eeriness of whatever poetic impulse corresponded in Coleridge’s mind to the guilt in the mariner’s.

If the story had a simple moral, it would be that the mariner’s unconscious impulse of love and pity is saving. He blessed the “happy living creatures” unawares because some kind saint took pity on him as well. But it is one of the central puzzles of the poem that this blessing turns out not to be nearly enough. It is the beginning of penance and redemption, but not the end. In fact, the end never comes. The return of the wind, the return to harbor, the subsequent years— none free him of the eternal burden of repeating his tale when he sees a person somehow like himself. The beauty of the blessing and of the impulse to bless does not restore him to his original state. Rather, it sustains itself as a sense of movement toward love in a world that is hostile to love. The world’s hostility to love is what makes its creatures suffer, and the love that seeks to counter that hostility can never ignore or transcend the world’s suffering.

Here, too, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner foretells the Intimations Ode, in which Wordsworth also feels a sudden and, he hopes, saving impulse of love toward the “blessed creatures” (l. 36) that surround him. But the impulse would not be saving if blessing were enough. Wordsworth needs to feel that the world is a world of loss, and what he and the Ancient Mariner have in common is the realization that all the living creatures in it are similarly thrown into it without orientation, bearing, or hope of escape from the burden of subjectivity. Both poems are about the irremediable discovery of the weight of this burden on all human beings, and the intensity of insight this discovery brings. The poem shares the insight even as it shares the burden, in Coleridge with the Wedding Guest. It is not too much to say that Coleridge hopes, perhaps rightly, that the Wedding Guest is Wordsworth himself, profoundly affected by the poem and surprised in his mortal nature by his own high instincts.

Bibliography Bate, Walter Jackson. Coleridge. New York: Macmillan, 1968. Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. Brisman, Leslie. Romantic Origins. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Selected Poems. Edited by William Empson and David Pirie. Manchester, England: Fyfield, 1989. Frank, Robert H. Passions within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. New York: Norton, 1988. Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 17: 219–256. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–74. Janowitz, Anne. England’s Ruins: Poetic Purpose and the National Landscape. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990. Lowes, John Livingston. Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930. Parker, Reeve. Coleridge’s Meditative Art. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

By samuel coleridge, the rime of the ancient mariner essay questions.

Make a case for why the Ancient Mariner stops and tells his tale to the Wedding Guest of all people. In your analysis, consider the Hermit, to whom the Ancient Mariner tells his tale for the first time.

How does Coleridge use Christian and/or Biblical references to weave a moral into "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? Is the moral itself Christian? Why or why not? Be sure to use at least two of the following categories of evidence in your analysis: symbolism, setting, numbers, baptism, crucifixion, original sin.

How does Coleridge portray the natural world before and after the Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross? Is there a major change? Use evidence pertaining to symbolism, metaphor, and rhyme scheme to support your thesis.

In your opinion, is the Ancient Mariner's punishment for killing the Albatross fair? Whose fate is worse, the Ancient Mariner's or the sailors'? Why?

Give at least three examples of liminal spaces in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and analyze their significance, if any, to Coleridge's ultimate message to the reader.

Discuss Coleridge's use of imagery throughout "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". How does he use sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell to inform the reader's experience of the story? Which senses do you think he emphasizes the most, and why?

Analyze the importance of the First Voice and Second Voice. To what realm do they belong, the physical or metaphysical? Why do you think Coleridge includes their points of view in the poem?

Choose one of the following pairs of characters and analyze the similarities and differences in how they are portrayed and what role they serve: the sailors and the Albatross, the Hermit and the Wedding Guest, the Hermit and the Ancient Mariner, Life-in-Death and the spirit that loves the Albatross.

Why do you think the Ancient Mariner kills the Albatross? Do his actions make him unusually cruel, or do they connect him to the whole of humanity?

Give varying examples of instances in which someone or something is imprisoned and explain how each contributes to a larger message. Is there any instance in which someone or something that imprisons is then imprisoned, or vice versa?

Analyze "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" as an allegory for one of the following, using points of evidence from each of the poem's seven parts: the writer's purpose, the need for spiritual salvation, environmentalism and/or animal rights.

Which do you think is the more significant motivating force in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": consequence, or coincidence? Make a case for one or the other using key moments of change in the plot as evidence.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

To what extent is the Mariner's experience predetermined by fate?

The Mariner's fate is really the existential fate that we all share. The Mariner's fate is decided by chance: he will either die, or he'll live a life that will be a lot like death. This dichotomy is at the heart of his fate unless he achieves...

What is the general meaning of the poem Ancient Mariner?

The general meaning of the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , is centered around the importance of nature, as all of nature is God's creation, and as such, it is blessed and must be treated love, care, respect, and thoughtfulness.

The time of the ancient mariner

Do you mean the last two stanza's? What particular ones are you referring to?

Study Guide for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner study guide contains a biography of Samuel Coleridge, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge.

• Coleridge's Use of Precise Observations of the Natural World to Convey Wider Thematic Ideas in His Poetry
• German Expressionism and German Romanticism as Exemplified by Nosferatu and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• The Mariner's Ancient Eye: Multiple Perspectives in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner As an Allegory
• The Union of Opposing Elements: Poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge

Lesson Plan for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Bibliography

E-Text of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner e-text contains the full text of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge.

Wikipedia Entries for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Introduction
• Inspiration for the poem
• Coleridge's comments
• Wordsworth's comments

Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Rime of the ancient mariner essay: introduction, power and nature in rime of the ancient mariner, spirituality versus environmentalism: should they be separated, nature in the rime of the ancient mariner: conclusion, works cited.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” fits within the Romantic literary style. In the poem, nature is represented as a powerful and inspiring force that is incomprehensible to humans, who, in comparison to nature, have no power in influencing the world and what eventually occurs. In the dispute about nature in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” there can be two contrasting opinions on the treatment of nature. On the one hand, environmentalists may be concerned with the way nature is treated by humans, while on the other, there is a spiritual perspective that nature is the embodiment of God, with which the Mariner must reconcile.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” begins with the description of a wedding feast, during which the Mariner decided to tell his remarkable story. The scene then changes to the description of nature where the Mariner is left alone to sail his ship: “the ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, Merrily, did we drop,” which signifies the positive outlook of the mariner on his upcoming adventures (Coleridge 52).

Alone and away from civilization, the Mariner is forced to battle against storms and other dangers of the ocean. A crucial moment to consider in the discussion about the role of nature in the poem is the Mariner killing an albatross (Rumens). Some can link this episode to the human desire to master nature, while for others, this act is spiritual. However, one must agree that nature in the poem has much more power over human beings than human beings have of nature. For instance, nature is so powerful that it forces the Mariner and his sailors to suffer from intense thirst when they remain in desolate waters: “Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink” (Coleridge 70). This shows that any attempts to become the master of nature are pointless, and the only thing that human beings can do is merely survive.

With regard to the idea of spirituality in the poem, the author depicts nature as an expression of the spiritual world. The author illustrates the close links between nature and the spirituality in the sequence of unfortunate events that the Mariner has to suffer after killing the albatross (Pham). In the poem, nature is the creation of God; thus, when the Mariner improperly interacts with nature and wants to gain power over it, he also challenges God. Therefore, attempts at harming nature are sins or moral failures since they question the authority and power of God.

In the Christian perspective, sins lead to punishment, and in the poem, the penalty is supernatural – a combination of natural and spiritual, with polar spirits coming to haunt the Mariner and his crew: “And some in dreams assured were of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us from the land of mist and snow” (Coleridge 71). Apart from the polar spirits, the Mariner experiences the nightmare of Life-in-Death: “The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold” (Coleridge part 3). The existence of such supernatural beings in the poem shows that humans should avoid being reckless in their actions and cause harm simply due to their rage.

The punishment is relieved when the Mariner and the seamen learn how to value nature. In the verse where the mariner started appreciating the creation of God: “A spring of life gushed from my heart, and I bless them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, and I blessed them unaware” there is a clear shift from the unfortunate events that haunted the protagonist (Coleridge 80). The appreciation for nature as the creation of God is the defining factor that alleviates the punishment because the Mariner realizes what he does wrong: “the self-same moment I could pray; and from my neck so free the albatross fell off, and sank like lead inti the sea” (Coleridge 81). The punishment relieves because the Mariner experiences the consequences of his actions and prays for being relieved from the hauntings of the spirits.

Throughout the entire poem, there is a message of appreciation for nature as God’s creation (Joavani 74). The author emphasizes that when human beings take what nature offers without giving back, they are likely to pay for their actions: “twas right, say they, such birds to slay, that brings the fog and mist” (Coleridge 69). In this way, the author wants to say that harming other natural creation of God will bring nothing but fog and mist, which many people associate with darkness and the lack of understanding of what the future holds. One cannot help to think about the resource crisis that the world is experiencing at the moment. People are used to relying on natural resources such as water, oil, minerals; however, they forget that when all of it is gone, the Earth will become impossible to live on (Goldenberg).

One can conclude that nature plays a dual role in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which means that the environmental and spiritual messages should not be opposed to one another. The co-existence of Life-in-Death and polar spirits within the poem shows that the author sees them as integral parts of God’s nature that humans should not overlook to avoid being treated in the same way as the Mariner (Kim 12). Although such supernatural phenomena as polar spirits do not exist in real life, Coleridge used them as metaphors that represent the adverse outcomes of harming the nature.

Coleridge, Samuel. The rime of the ancient mariner . The Floating Press, 2009.

Goldenberg, Suzanne. “Why Global Water Shortages Pose Threat of Terror and War.” The Guardian , 2014, Web.

Joavani, Loudres. “The Interplay of Faith and Imagination: An Analysis of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” International Journal of Languages, vol. 2, no. 2, 2014, pp. 73-97.

Kim, Paul Chi Hun. The Notion of Nature in Coleridge and Wordsworth from the Perspective of Ecotheology . Thesis, University of Warwick, 2013. UOW, 2013.

Pham, Thomas. “A Beautiful World of Ethereal Places and Ephemeral Wonders.” English102 , 2017, Web.

Rumens, Carol. “Poem of the Week: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.” The Guardian , 2009, Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 31). Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nature-in-coleridges-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/

"Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge." IvyPanda , 31 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/nature-in-coleridges-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nature-in-coleridges-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/.

1. IvyPanda . "Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nature-in-coleridges-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Nature in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nature-in-coleridges-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/.

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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Why does the Mariner tell his story to the Wedding Guest? Consider the Hermit in your answer.

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Whose fate is worse: the Mariner’s, or that of the sailors? Why?

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What Happened When Captain Cook Went Crazy

In “The Wide Wide Sea,” Hampton Sides offers a fuller picture of the British explorer’s final voyage to the Pacific islands.

The English explorer James Cook, circa 1765. Credit... Stock Montage/Getty Images

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THE WIDE WIDE SEA: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides

In January 1779, when the British explorer James Cook sailed into a volcanic bay known by Hawaiians as “the Pathway of the Gods,” he beheld thousands of people seemingly waiting for him on shore. Once he came on land, people prostrated themselves and chanted “Lono,” the name of a Hawaiian deity. Cook was bewildered.

It was as though the European mariner “had stepped into an ancient script for a cosmic pageant he knew nothing about,” Hampton Sides writes in “The Wide Wide Sea,” his propulsive and vivid history of Cook’s third and final voyage across the globe .

As Sides describes the encounter, Cook happened to arrive during a festival honoring Lono, sailing around the island in the same clockwise fashion favored by the god, possibly causing him to be mistaken as the divinity.

Sides, the author of several books on war and exploration, makes a symbolic pageant of his own of Cook’s last voyage, finding in it “a morally complicated tale that has left a lot for modern sensibilities to unravel and critique,” including the “historical seeds” of debates about “Eurocentrism,” “toxic masculinity” and “cultural appropriation.”

Cook’s two earlier global expeditions focused on scientific goals — first to observe the transit of Venus from the Pacific Ocean and then to make sure there was no extra continent in the middle of it. His final voyage, however, was inextricably bound up in colonialism: During the explorer’s second expedition, a young Polynesian man named Mai had persuaded the captain of one of Cook’s ships to bring him to London in the hope of acquiring guns to kill his Pacific islander enemies.

A few years later, George III commissioned Cook to return Mai to Polynesia on the way to searching for an Arctic passage to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Mai brought along a menagerie of plants and livestock given to him by the king, who hoped that Mai would convert his native islands into simulacra of the English countryside.

“The Wide Wide Sea” is not so much a story of “first contact” as one of Cook reckoning with the fallout of what he and others had wrought in expanding the map of Europe’s power. Retracing parts of his previous voyages while chauffeuring Mai, Cook is forced to confront the fact that his influence on groups he helped “discover” has not been universally positive. Sexually transmitted diseases introduced by his sailors on earlier expeditions have spread. Some Indigenous groups that once welcomed him have become hard bargainers, seeming primarily interested in the Europeans for their iron and trinkets.

Sides writes that Cook “saw himself as an explorer-scientist,” who “tried to follow an ethic of impartial observation born of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution” and whose “descriptions of Indigenous peoples were tolerant and often quite sympathetic” by “the standards of his time.”

In Hawaii, he had been circling the island in a vain attempt to keep his crew from disembarking, finding lovers and spreading more gonorrhea. And despite the fact that he was ferrying Mai and his guns back to the Pacific, Cook also thought it generally better to avoid “political squabbles” among the civilizations he encountered.

But Cook’s actions on this final journey raised questions about his adherence to impartial observation. He responded to the theft of a single goat by sending his mariners on a multiday rampage to burn whole villages to force its return. His men worried that their captain’s “judgment — and his legendary equanimity — had begun to falter,” Sides writes. As the voyage progressed, Cook became startlingly free with the disciplinary whip on his crew.

“The Wide Wide Sea” presents Cook’s moral collapse as an enigma. Sides cites other historians’ arguments that lingering physical ailments — one suggests he picked up a parasite from some bad fish — might have darkened Cook’s mood. But his journals and ship logs, which dedicate hundreds of thousands of words to oceanic data, offer little to resolve the mystery. “In all those pages we rarely get a glimpse of Cook’s emotional world,” Sides notes, describing the explorer as “a technician, a cyborg, a navigational machine.”

The gaps in Cook’s interior journey stand out because of the incredible job Sides does in bringing to life Cook’s physical journey. New Zealand, Tahiti, Kamchatka, Hawaii and London come alive with you-are-there descriptions of gales, crushing ice packs and gun smoke, the set pieces of exploration and endurance that made these tales so hypnotizing when they first appeared. The earliest major account of Cook’s first Pacific expedition was one of the most popular publications of the 18th century.

But Sides isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view. “The Wide Wide Sea” fits neatly into a growing genre that includes David Grann’s “ The Wager ” and Candice Millard’s “ River of the Gods ,” in which famous expeditions, once told as swashbuckling stories of adventure, are recast within the tragic history of colonialism . Sides weaves in oral histories to show how Hawaiians and other Indigenous groups perceived Cook, and strives to bring to life ancient Polynesian cultures just as much as imperial England.

And yet, such modern retellings also force us to ask how different they really are from their predecessors, especially if much of their appeal lies in exactly the same derring-do that enthralled prior audiences. Parts of “The Wide Wide Sea” inevitably echo the storytelling of previous yarns, even if Sides self-consciously critiques them. Just as Cook, in retracing his earlier voyages, became enmeshed in the dubious consequences of his previous expeditions, so, too, does this newest retracing of his story becomes tangled in the historical ironies it seeks to transcend.

In the end, Mai got his guns home and shot his enemies, and the Hawaiians eventually realized that Cook was not a god. After straining their resources to outfit his ships, Cook tried to kidnap the king of Hawaii to force the return of a stolen boat. A confrontation ensued and the explorer was clubbed and stabbed to death, perhaps with a dagger made of a swordfish bill.

The British massacred many Hawaiians with firearms, put heads on poles and burned homes. Once accounts of these exploits reached England, they were multiplied by printing presses and spread across their world-spanning empire. The Hawaiians committed their losses to memory. And though the newest version of Cook’s story includes theirs, it’s still Cook’s story that we are retelling with each new age.

THE WIDE WIDE SEA : Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, | By Hampton Sides | Doubleday | 408 pp. | $35

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel taylor coleridge, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

In Part II, the Mariner's allusion to the crucifixion of Christ emphasizes the burden he must carry after killing the albatross:

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross  About my neck was hung. Cite this Quote

The line "Instead of the cross, the Albatross" invokes Christian symbolism. In the Christian tradition, the cross is a central symbol representing the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, who willingly bore the burden of humanity's sins. The act of hanging the albatross around the Mariner's neck becomes an allusion to the crucifixion that suggests the punishment that the Mariner must carry with him after shooting the albatross. It also functions to silently express the disapproval of the Sailors, who are too thirsty to speak. As they blame the Mariner for the "hot and copper sky" and the lack of drinkable rain, they decide to "throw the whole guilt" upon him, demonstrating their intense disapproval of his actions, especially as the death of the albatross appears to be "avenged" by nature. 

Allusions to Christianity add depth to the Mariner's story and emphasize themes of sin, guilt, and the need for redemption. They also contribute to the broader religious and moral undertones in the poem, aligning the Mariner's journey with archetypal narratives of spiritual struggle and the quest for forgiveness. Some critics compare the albatross itself to Jesus Christ, as it visits a boat full of men and dies by a cross -bow and the Mariner himself compares it to "a Christian Soul." This particular allusion reinforces the fact that the Mariner must suffer for his sins and carry the burden of the albatross as a reminder of his wrongdoing. It also evokes the fickleness of humankind, because the Sailors who once approved of the Mariner's decision to kill the albatross end up turning against him.