Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' tells the nightmarish tale of an ancient mariner's voyage with supernatural proportions. As a person reads they find that this epic poem has a deeper, more symbolic connection with God. The Ancient Mariner starts his tale out with what seems like a typical voyage. However it drastically changes it's course when out of impulse the Mariner kills the Albatross. After such a heartless act, the Mariner is cursed with his crime; he must face his punishment and finally find his own redemption from God.
             In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" the arrival of the albatross was hailed as a good omen amongst the Mariner's crew. Several days prior to the arrival of the "bird of good omen" a storm arose and the Mariner's ship and crew were driven south towards the South Pole into the "land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen," this cast a shadow of great foreboding over the ship and crew. "As if it had been a Christian soul," so came the advent of the albatross, marking as what the crewmen believed was good luck. Even though the great seabird brought with it fog and mist, for nine days the albatross faithfully followed the ship as it made its way northward. Seemingly weary of the great bird's unnerving presence, the mariner shoots the albatross with his crossbow. This thoughtless, heartless act would end up being the mariner's greatest downfall and his ultimate sin. Bringing a curse upon the whole ship and crew, but all too late for the mariner, did he realize that what a "hellish" crime he had committed? The ship's crew, in distress throw their whole guilt on the old man in the form of persecution and symbolic crucifixion by the hanging of the dead bird around is neck. In his poem, Coleridge offers several religious allusions such as this. The symbolis...