The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Master Answer (Supernatural, Crime

and Punishment)

Willing suspension of disbelief intro : "In looking at objects of nature, I am

thinking as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the window pane, I seem
rather to be seeking, as it were asking, a symbolical language for something within
me that always and forever exists, than observing anything new", states Coleridge.
The willing suspension of disbelief is a term most often used to describe the
mechanisms of assimilation required to appreciate an invented situation,
particularly a work of drama or fiction in film, theater, or literature. The term was
coined by literary figure Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his work from 1817, titled
'Biographia Literaria' :"In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in
which it was agreed, that my endeavors 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 or the moment, which
constitutes poetic faith."

The three major works of Coleridge– 'Christabel ', 'The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner', and 'Kubla Khan' deals with supernatural phenomena. Super naturalism is
anything that goes beyond nature, reasoning, something unexplained by logical
grounds. Coleridge's main object as a poet was to write about supernatural
characters and events but to redeem this kind of writing from the coarse
sensationalism of the school of terror by firmly linking it to the psychological truth
and giving it a human and familiar look.

The function of the elements and heavenly bodies in the poem is image the
mariner's spiritual states and to provide in the narrative structure of the poem the
link between the mariner and ordinary man, and the Mariner as one acquainted
with the invisible world, which has its own sets of values. The albatross has a
power of control over the elements: it is continued in the idea of the plaguing spirit
that followed the ship "Nine fathoms deep / From the land of mist and snow". The
angelic spirits who inspired the dead men to work the ship are sent to release the
ship from the control of the demons of the elements and the spirit from the South
Pole works under their orders. The two voices in Parts V and VI are two fellow
demons of the polar spirit, two "invisible inhabitants of the elements" as the gloss
calls them and finally the ship is brought back to port under the undisputed control
of angelic spirits accompany by wind. The interrelation of the different spiritual
beings establishes the poem's more obvious bearings on the moral world.

The poem opens with the mariner interacting with the wedding guest, who,
although resisting, is mesmerized by the "glittering eye" of the mariner. The
punning variation on "I" creates in us an awareness of his intense sense of the self,
"glittering" with the wisdom that he has secured from the sea. The insistence of the
mariner with his urgent tale is a narration of his wedding with the sea signifying
sexuality, mating the self and birth, in this poem, of that wisdom which the mariner
passes to the wedding guest and the poet to us. The wedding guest is already
experiencing the alarm as mariner narrates his tale of the fierce gale and the
appearance of the albatross. In a dramatic closure to Part-I the mariner confesses
his crime committed on Christian account, symbolic of the Son of God happening
to mankind but we failing to perceive the presence of mercy, our denial is the sin.
The albatross is a Christian soul and the mariner has betrayed hospitality. The
mariner recalls Cain’s guilty wanderings after murdering Abel; the sea becomes
psychological site for the mariner who is narrating the origins of human guilt,
suffering and repentance.

Little need be said about the context of styles to which the "Mariner" belongs; it
has plain affiliations with Gothic horrors. Natural scenes stay on Supernatural and
gradually prepare us for the appearance of the skeleton ship. The ship shrouded in
the mist reflects the unease of sailors, but as the mist clears the sailors revise their
attitude towards the mariner's act of killing the albatross. Soon superstition stresses
the stillness and they compel the mariner to wear the albatross as a mark of his
crucifix. Throughout most of the voyage the ship is at the mercy of the elements.
The mariner only gradually discovered the consequences of what he had done– it
was a wicked ignorance accompanied by a wild thoughtless failure to consider
what might be the truth about the order of the universe. This failure to reach the
truth, and, to him, the incomprehensibility of what was going on is made more
apparent when the rest of the crew become accomplices in his crime.
The Sun and Moon represent the opposing forces that impact the Mariner's journey
and the rest of the world. They compete against each other, at times incarnating
both natural and supernatural forces. The sun is associated with blood, heat,
dryness, and thirst, all of which contribute to the Sailor’s deaths. The moon
controls the tides; it represents the supernatural and divine effects. Before the sun
sets and is replaced by the moon, the ghostly ship of Death and Life-in Death is
superimposed over the sun. The Mariner's spiritual awakening and the next stage of
penance takes place under the light of the moon. It is a cyclic process and
competition between the sun and moon that represents the unity of God's creation,
divine influence, and the cyclical process of sin, penance, and absolution that
Christians experience.

The mariner bites his own arm to drink is own blood— the albatross is the cross,
the mariner is Christ who invites the piercing of the nail and then shouts out to his
companions seeking forgiveness for. At sunset, a skeleton ship with specter crews
arrives, and they are casting dice and life-in-death triumphs intensifying the
desolation and dereliction the mariner is experiencing.

The wedding guest is in a compulsive participation and the mariner and provides a
cold assurance – his "body dropped not down". His experience is worse than death;
he is unable to die or to pray, he is unable to exhaust himself of his memory. There
are more invisible than visible natures in the universe, the human mind has always
sought knowledge and understanding that is beyond the rational the reach of
comprehension. The Ancient Mariner is searching the sea to attain it.Except for
the Mariner, all of the sailors died in supernatural ways as each man dies, his soul
passes by the old sailor The way the dead body of the albatross falls from Mariner's
neck into the sea has a supernatural quality to it.

The mariner dreams of the dew and wakes up to rain. The ship now moves without
wind, urged by supernatural agency. The mariner while fainted hears the spirits
evaluate his crime–one spirit recalling the act of the loved bird being killed and the
other spirit prophesying “penance more will do".

The story has to be narrated to a wedding guest by the Ancient Mariner as he

becomes the New Christ, the coming-of-age experience of Christabel because
Jesus Christ had his Cross upon his shoulders and the albatross is hung around the
neck of the Ancient Mariner as if the Cross is essential identity and existential
space of an individual. The spirits continue to debate till the mariner wakes up to
find himself sailing in fair weather. As he eventually enters the harbor, he arrives
at the hermit "who will wash away the albatrosses blood”.

The rapid shrinking of the ship into the sea at the conclusion is also a supernatural
event. The poet suggests near the end of the poem how frightening the Mariner
looks. Rather than portraying the features of his face, he focuses on the
psychological effects that seeing it has on the pilot, Hermit, and the pilot's boy.
The Hermit lives alone in sync with nature as the thunder sinks the ship. The
mariner is pulled aboard by the Pilot's boat. As the mariner attempts to speak the
rescuers react strangely, but the mariner is committed to confession, relives and
relieves his agony. His voyage continues in search of the wedding guest who needs
to hear his tale and receives his message of essential loneliness of the soul without
God, the necessity of prayer and the futility of prayer that lacks love.
We wake up sadder and wiser, the mariner is the medievalized Coleridge; he is the
wandering Cain who becomes and outlaw whom no man may kill– "Whosoever
salyth Cain, says the Lord / Vengeance shall l be taken on on him seven fold". Cain
was in search of his own extinction – "I desire to die". It tells us the spectre of his
brother Abel but he is condemned to live with his crime and Coleridge writes a
Christian parable.