Has the Rime of the Ancient Mariner got a Moral?

In order to determine whether The Rime Of the Ancient Mariner is a moral story or has a moral to it, it must be understood what morality and a moral in literature are. Morality is an understanding with regards to what are the right and wrong actions to take in different circumstances. For a piece of literature to be moral it mist shoe us moral values or create a sense of moral awareness, so, does the ‘Rime’?

One of the most famous people to outwardly say the ‘Rime’ has no moral was Mrs Barbauld. Coleridge recalls her comments in Table Talk, “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.” (The Road To Xanadu, p276) It was his own opinion that it was over moralistic however, “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.” (The Road To Xanadu, p276)

If Coleridge felt these stanzas were obtrusively moralistic, why did he not alter or remove them? It could be presumed that Coleridge thought them to be integral to his poem.

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Its sermonising conclusion, the Mariner's stumbling effort to articulate what he has learned, is at one and the same time an accurate inference and a hopelessly inadequate expression of what befell him on the wide sea. Many early critics have been unable to account for so apparently awkward an intrusion of sententious godliness. By changing the sinful act of will from the eating of the fruit to the killing of a bird, Coleridge is enlarging upon the symbolic truth of the Bible by imbuing it with the new romantic philosophy of religion - a philosophy which emphasizes the relationship of God and Nature. He is lost at sea, left alone in the night to suffer, and he has detached from his natural cycle. The Mariner still has much to suffer but he has become a kind of prophet who must urgently make himself heard. evil entered into man's universe) because man did not obey God's commandments of which the prohibition of the eating of the forbidden fruit is merely a symbol.

It is in the first part of the story that the Mariner and his crew come across the albatross hailed as a pious good omen that caused "…a good south wind” (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, p33) showing a mysterious, supernatural quality. The Mariner, however, is mustering pride and decides to shoot the Albatross, “With my cross-bow, / I shot the ALBATROSS!” (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, p33) He illustrates his belief that he does not need the good luck of the Albatross. A sailor and his ship are becalmed when an Albatross comes, bringing wind and relief. ’ His situation is redeemed by another spontaneous act, his blessing of the water snakes that swim around the ship. Spiritual values have transcended physical values. “… the Mariner becomes the traditional figure of the Wandering Jew. At the end of the poem when the Pilot’s boat goes out to investigate the returning, spectral ship, neither the Pilot nor the boatboy can bear the encounter.

Approximate Word count = 3305
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)

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