For Tuesday: Coleridge, The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner
NOTE: We’ll be reading the poem slowly, so I encourage
you to read the entire poem, but feel free to read slowly, even if you don’t
quite finish it. In this poem, the
details are more important than the overall story, so look at it less as an
actual narrative than a series of short poems that cohere into a larger
theme. But most of all, read slowly and
look for the metaphors, since poetry is all about how metaphors transform our
perception/experience of the world (especially important in fantasy
literature!).
Answer 2 of the 4 questions that follow:
1. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner opens with a frame
narrative, that of the Mariner stopping a Wedding Guest and putting him under a
spell so he can tell his story: “He holds him with his glittering eye.” Why do stories typically employ a frame
narrative (think of ones you know from previous classes) and why might it be
especially important in a work of fantasy?
Why not simply tell the Mariner’s tale without the artifice of telling it
to someone else?
2. Read the glosses on the left side of the poem
carefully: are they really there to
clarify the action of the poem? While at
times they seem to merely summarize the events, where do they do something
else? Do you find passages that seem to
add unnecessary detail or comically deflate the narrative? Consider particularly this gem: “Like vessel,
like crew!” (also consider, if the
glosses are so important, then why not simply write prose instead of a poem?)
3. Why does the Mariner kill the Albatross? How does the crew initially react to this
death, and why does their reaction change over time? In the fantasy logic of the poem, why does
this seem to be a “sin”? Is it a sin
cosmically, or merely a sin in the minds of the men? Or simply in the mind of the Mariner
himself?
3. I am not really sure as to why he kills the Albatross. I have read that section over and over trying to figure out exactly why. I think possibly he thought that hard times were over, so he killed it. It's almost as if he thought the Albatross didn't really have anything to do with saving them from the icy depths. At first the crew thought killing the bird was justified. They all pretty much cursed the bird for bring winds, fog, and mist. Later, the crew believes it was bad luck to kill the Albatross because it's murder brought on a drought that is slowly killing them. I am not sure if I am reading this correctly but did the crew become zombie-ish? This seems as though Pirates of the Caribbean somewhat borrowed this idea...
ReplyDeleteI think the killing of the Albatross could be a sin cosmically because the murder was for no reason, and it put the whole world off kilter thus making it unbalanced. It could be deemed as a sin in the minds of the men because they eventually picture the Albatross as a sign of fortune because their luck had changed since the murder. It is also equally possible the Mariner himself could extremely bothered by killing the innocent animal for no realistic reason, and also because of the harsh conditions he has been exposed to could've made him go insane. I mean why in the world does the Mariner feel like he HAS to tell people his story? We are seeing the story fold out more through the perspective of the Mariner, so really this could all be a figment of his imagination.
1. I am drawing a blank on books that start this way, but I can think of some movies. Titanic starts out by the old woman talking to her family and then telling them about the tragic love story that happened on the ship. This is important for Fantasy works because of the storytelling aspect taking place. For instance, there is a more magical moment taking place when someone takes us on a journey orally to a past (or future) that is unfamiliar to us. It is very much like when you are telling a story to a child. There is the famous line of "Once upon a time" or "In a galaxy far far away". Stories like these are usually meant for entertainment, which usually sucks us all in. I am not sure why though. Is it because one of our main forms of education, entertainment, and philosophies had been passed down orally time and time again before written communication had ever been considered? Is it "hard-wired" within our being? This I am unsure of, but what I can tell you is sometimes I would rather have a story that happened long ago unfold in my mind rather than one from the here and now.
Great responses: this is indeed a "once upon a time" or a "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" story. A frame narrative suggests an old, time-honored tale, which takes us to a realm of fantasy and myth. This transition is necessary so we can believe in the supernatural elements of the tale without taking them too literally. In a sense, if it's not real, then we can have more fun reading it and letting it transport us to fantastic--and nightmarish--realms.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete3. So I’m not sure I ever quite understood the reasoning behind the Mariners choice to kill the Albatross. The crew seemed to realize that it would eventually bring them bad luck, which if you believe in that kind of thing then it did. They were all killed by the Lady Death, or maybe just had their souls stolen, not sure. I liked the religious references within this poem. It was considered a sin to kill the bird that was bringing them good fortune, and the Mariner paid for his sins. I think that killing the Albatross made life for the Mariner harder. Unlike his shipmates, he had to live with his sin and watch them die pretty much because of his actions.
ReplyDelete1. I really liked that we were set up with that frame narrative. It’s like a story within a story. It adds a lot of elements to the poem. We know that the Mariner made it out alive; we know that it could just be an old sailor’s tale, or we could decide to believe the Mariner. It’s an interesting vantage point because the reader, and in this case the wedding guest, gets to decide how they want to interpret the old man’s story, as just that, or as an actual occurrence.
Great responses; the frame narrative suggests that we're going "to another world," and in this case, a much older one (we don't know how long the Mariner has been traveling around telling his tale). It also suggests that none of this may be real in the way we understand it, so we can't assume that the way the story is presented is true, or accurate, or literal. We've entered a world of myth and symbol, where Storm-Blasts chase exploring ships and Death can play Life-in-Death in dice games for Mariner's souls.
DeleteRocky Moore
ReplyDelete2. At first I was very pleased to have the commentary sprinkled throughout the poem, since that kind of prose is what I am used to it allowed me to follow along better than I would have. It seemed to help when there were words that I couldn't understand or when I got lost, it put me right back to where I needed to be to follow along. I don't believe this is really the reason these little phrases are there on the left because I ask myself why would someone be writing that - thinking that we would get lost? That would lead to me to answer the question about why didn't the writer just use prose instead of the poetry style and I think that is due to the fact that there is an element of an omniscient character it seems watching over the events. For example this 'character' if you would call them that made claims about a lot of spiritual ideas that I really doubt the Mariner or anyone else knew anything about. On page 9 in the fourth full stanza the left side passage says, "A spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more". Maybe this character symbolizes God or higher being using the poem as a lesson for us, like not killing things we shouldn't. This may be way off base but I feel like this poem could literally have many reasons and symbols interpreted in numerous way.
4. On page 7, stanzas 3, 4, and 5 gives an example of this 'sublime' feeling one may have had during the Romantic era and even today as we read these passages. "And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- the ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound! At length did cross and Albatross, Through the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name." I thought the description of the ice and the Albatross was something that had the we effect in regards to being 'sublime", and this scene may have answered the question about why he killed the Albatross, at least one of many. That reason may be because this magnificent creature according to this passage may have been something the Mariner was he didn't know anything about and that usually coincides with the saying that we treat the things we are scared of poorly when we don't know them. To go back to answering the actual question I really felt awe when reading that part with the ice and the bird.
Great responses...glad you were skeptical of the glosses, even if you did find them helpful on occasion. This is a poem we're meant to get lost in, since it's a dream, a work of art which has no one reading or solution. In the end, it's a mirror, a lot like Rorschach's mask: we see what is inside us, and that shapes the poem to our own will.
Delete1) I think authors employ a frame narrative because of the imagery it brings to the work. "He holds him with his glittering eye" is much more enticing than saying, "He looked at him" or something even less interesting. Authors choose to be more descriptive to gain the respect of the reader. As readers, we tend to look at a book and say "wow me." If a book doesn't grasp our full attention by page 3, we're done. Authors have to fancy up the language to make things more interesting; gotta keep the reader intrigued.
ReplyDelete2) I was personally confused by the side notes. I felt like I didn't need them for clarification, so they kind of threw me off more than they did any good. I'm unsure of why they were included to begin with. I didn't feel like the poetry was too incredibly hard to understand on its own. In my opinion, I find it to be like a bad comedian trying to narrate his jokes after he's already told them. I don't know. Maybe it'll get better, but right now, the glosses are killin' me.
Good responses, but as we discussed in class, the glosses are there to (a) be yet another frame narrative, another voice telling the story, and (b) to try to tempt you out of the magic and offer you a rational, measured response to the story. But if so, then why tell it at all? At some point, we have to read the poem we have and wonder whether the magic simply IS magic!
DeleteShelby Pletcher
ReplyDelete3) First of all, I loved this poem. I read it three times trying to soak it all up. It's incredible and I can't wait for our class discussions on it. To answer your question, I think this poem is one gigantic theological metaphor, in ways I can't grasp on my own. But I do think I understand why the mariner ended up killing the albatross, despite the fact that it saved him and his shipmates. I think it's a metaphor for how he wants to take for granted the think that's saved him. Instead of worshiping it for its beauty and power while its alive, he chooses to kill it and take power over it himself. However, the moment he does this, he ends up ruining his life and killing his shipmates. In part 2, the mariner closes by literally saying, "Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung." While in the poem he's referring to his cross-bow, I think this is a direct metaphor, by the poet, to the cross of Christ. He rejected the grace that was afforded him and now he's covered in the blood of his sin. However, the cross-bow was what he used to sin, and the cross of Christ is where he finds freedom from his sin. (Like when he hears the Hermit sing hymns and he says, "He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away the albatross's blood. [pt. 6]" or when he prays for the first time and says, "And from my neck so free the albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea. [pt.4]") If he hadn't of killed this albatross, he never would have fallen and been shown grace and redemption in salvation.
4) To tie into my last response, I think Colridge is definitely opening up an era of Romanticism with this poem. There are not only all of these religious and spiritual themes, but these themes of nature that fill not only the plot, but the imagery as well, point towards the romantic idea that nature is where we find God and God is in nature, so we must revere nature and be in awe of it. The mariner shoots the albatross because 1) he's taking advantage of the salvation mercifully graced upon him, and 2) because he doesn't appreciate God, and therefore does not appreciate nature. Through out the beginning of the poem, the narrator continues to disrespect nature by the killing of the albatross, but also by referring to the creatures at the bottom of the ocean he was treading on as "slimy things", and then later after his salvation, as he looks to the same creatures, he says, "O happy living things no tongue their beauty might declare: a spring of love gushed from my heart, and i blessed them unaware: sure my saint took pity on me, and i blessed them unaware." I believe the poet is referring to the fact that once he found God, he found an awe for nature. And therefore, nature became a glorious thing to him. This is, undoubtedly, maybe not the singular narrative, but the strongest narrative of the this entire story.
Excellent responses--so much to respond to here! Let me just say that the idea of rejecting grace, and being blind to his own vision of "sin" is important. We experience the Arctic as a place of menace and "hell" because he does. Though it is the land of the Albatross--it, too, is Nature. So why does he reject it? And when does he begin to see it with new eyes? Why does the Albatross finally fall?
Delete1. We just read Great Expectations in Brit Lit, and that is an older Pip reflecting on his life. He’s got perspective to add to his experience in the story. It adds to the layers of a story and our understanding of what’s going on. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner employs supernatural elements, and I think that framing the story sets up the ambience begging the reader to pay attention because it’s important enough to be retold. Whenever we tell ghost stories it’s not in the middle of the afternoon. People are more likely to associate them with late night tellings, campfires, or being out in nature or another strange setting away from home. To add to the mood, the listener is being kept from revelry and merriment by the mariner just outside of this joyful setting and against his will to hear the scary tale- he has to hypnotize him or whatever he does exactly.
ReplyDelete4. The mariner is an isolated character doomed to go travel “from land to land” telling his story, and the descriptions of nature help set this up. He’s on a boat that gets lost in the vast ocean then going southward it becomes “wondrous cold” and finds itself among “ice, mast high, came floating by.” His crew is talked about but not really interacted with. The ice, mist, and fog that surround the ship caused the crew to feel like they’ve been cut off from everyone in a land where they already had seen no living thing. But even more so the mariner because he is the one telling the story and the only one who survives.
Yes, this IS a ghost story, one that is told by the fireside (in a way), and is all the more creepy for being told in the middle of a wedding--the time of spring, new life, etc. The poem is also like a spell thanks to this technique, since it arrests us and forces us to listen, then artfully breaks off once or twice to make sure we're sufficiently "caught."
DeleteAshley Bean
ReplyDelete1. Oddly enough, I am reading a kind of frame narrative now from the novel "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. It's also fantasy, and consists of an old innkeeper telling his tale to a scribe. In both the poem and this book, they have two stories going on at once, which is why I love them. The poem mainly focuses on the story being told, but sometimes switches back to the present. A similar thing is used in "A Game of Thrones" which I loved. I think they do this for a couple of reasons. Specifically in the poem, it gives us the feeling that this storyteller may or may not be a reliable narrator. The story definitely has its flourishes, but is any of it true at all? We don't really know, and that's kind of the fun for me.
2. I thought the glosses were put there by an edition to help understand the poem, but it didn't seem right because sometimes they were just as confusing as the poem itself. It almost seems to be another "frame" of the frame narrative. While it's helping tell the same story, it's doing it in a different way. Sometimes it seems to state the obvious, as on page 20, the poem reads "This Hermit good lives in that wood" while the gloss says "The Hermit of the Wood." Didn't the poem already state that pretty clearly? I'm not sure why he had it say things like that, but I think they added an interesting aspect to the poem, maybe a little humor.
Yes, the unreliable narrator is definitely there, and he clearly keeps some things out, though these are artfully reveled in the poem itself. But the frame narrative also gives us the distancing necessary to enter a true world of fantasy, since this is all a "tale of long ago." The metaphors are more natural since they're confined to an imagined past than they would be if it simply happened in the story. Coleridge wants to trick us into reading an ancient ballad/text, and the glosses help us imagine this as well.
Delete3. I don't think that the poem is very clear about why the mariner killed the albatross. His crew, at first, seem to support his decision by blaming the bird for the fog and mist that lifts after its death. However, as the poem goes on, the mariner's crew change their minds. They believe that everything bad that is happening to them is because the mariner killed the bird. This must be why they believe it to be a sin. All of the men also die, except for the one who killed him. Maybe he really is cursed.
ReplyDelete4. I think that this poem is filled with sublime images. For example, in part IV stanza five it reads,
"I looked upon the rotting sea,
and drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay."
I think that the imagery right here was definitely used to inspire fear. How many times have we ever heard the sea described as 'rotting?' I can't think of any really. How would a sea be rotting? I think that he uses this imagery to inspire a sense of fear in the reader about the situation of the mariner. I mean, can you imagine a situation in which you were the only living thing around? All of your shipmates are dead and rotting on the deck and there is no land to be seen. This surely doesn't call for any positive imagery about the sea. This use of the sublime helps the reader to understand the eeriness of the poem.
Cora-lee Snow
Yes, great response: the sea is a rotting, reeking cespool to him, full of unspeakable horrors. Of course, this is also where the albatross comes from...it is part of Nature, part of the world, and part of ourselves. "Hell" is often what we bring with us, and this poem suggests, I think, that the Mariner brought his evil with him and projected it onto the landscape (killing something good, the albatross, and trying to eradicate the beauty elsewhere). It's only when he learns to see beyond this that his torment lessens.
Delete1. I find that stories that incorporate frame narratives, helps the reader build emotion an empathize with the narrator. By sympathizing with the narrator, readers are more likely to understand the story being told from the narrators perspective (if that makes any sense). Much like old Christmas movies like Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer and A Christmas Story, there is always a narrator that begins to tell the story, while the screen is still showing the present. That's how I imagine the frame narrative working in this poem: an old man grabs a younger guy and says "let's take a blast into the past" and starts telling his story. By enticing the younger guy, the narrator is also intriguing us, the reader. If we were to just read the mariner's reflections in like an old journal or something, we wouldn't be nearly as interested as we are with hearing him tell it to a young soul.
ReplyDelete4.This poem has so many hidden messages and metaphors. The idea of Man v. Nature is obviously evident, and there is even Man v. God/God like powers. My favorite portion of the sublime in this reading, is when there is this idea of the Snow Blast. Like we said in class, the blast is personified to sound like an actual creature or being: it's given a name and "roars" like an actual creature. By personifying this, Coleridge gives a notion towards Man v. Godlike powers, same as when he describes the ice they endure. Ice is symbolized by being a vast and empty space, by doing this, it's hinting at the idea that ice is death. Death= Ice. The ice they endure is cold and looks like it goes on forever, leaving no room for life in between. Coleridge even makes the reader feel cold and empty thinking about the idea of ice in nature, thus motioning towards the sublime. It really is an interesting idea, and I love the personification of the ice and the storm being a person, rather than an inanimate object.
Bria Gambrell
Great responses: the Arctic was the ultimate "sublime" location for Coleridge, since at his time it was like exploring the Moon--it was completely uncharted and alien. Yet Coleridge believed that Nature was never truly alien, and that everything could evoke beauty and emotion if one truly looked--Nature could be the great mirror in which man/woman sees himself/herself. Perhaps the Mariner's problem is that all he can see is horror and nightmare?
ReplyDelete1. Frame narratives are important to works of fantasy because it adds another dimension to the story. Fantasies are told more easily through frame narratives because it adds an element of mystery and suspense that is not achieved through first and third perspectives. By telling the Mariner’s tale to the Wedding Guest, Coleridge fosters the element of surprise because the reader does no know when they will be yanked out of the story and back to the “real world”. Much like “once upon a time…” or “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” frame narratives are a cue to the reader to expect the element of fantasy.
ReplyDelete2. The glosses, for the most part, seem to literally interpret the stanzas they describe. They take away the reader’s ability to gather their own conclusion about what the poem means. Other times, the glosses embellish the poem in some ways I could never come up with on my own. I’m not sure this is a good thing because the point of poetry to interpret the meaning for you self. As a whole, I could do without the glosses.
Raegan Sampson