46 pages • 1 hour read
Samuel ColeridgeThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1798A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4 Summary
At this point, the Wedding Guest again interrupts the Mariner. Hearing that all the sailors died, he is afraid that the Mariner is also dead, and that he is a ghost or a zombie. However, the Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that he did not die like the sailors: “Fear not, fear not, thou wedding guest! / This body dropt not down” (10).
The Mariner goes on with his tale. He tells the Wedding Guest that now, all alone on the ship, he felt trapped between the sea and the bodies of the dead sailors. The Mariner loathes the slimy creatures that are living on top of the ocean. He wonders why they should live while his crew is dead. He tries to pray but finds he is unable to. Despite closing his eyes, the Mariner is still cursed by the sailors’ eyes. The sailors’ bodies do not rot and the look in their eyes remains for a whole week. Even after this week, the Mariner is still not dead.
At the end of the week, the Mariner watches beautiful water snakes, rather than slimy sea creatures, swimming by the ship: “O happy living things no tongue / Their beauty might declare: / A spring of love gusht from my heart, / And I bless’d them unaware! / Sure my kind saint took pity on me, / And I bless’d them unaware” (12). As the Mariner celebrates their beauty, he finds he is able to pray again and “The Albatross fell off, and sank / Like lead into the sea” (13).
Part 4 Analysis
By interrupting the Mariner’s story, the Wedding Guest is bringing the readers back to the mundane. This makes the sublime experiences of the Mariner even more terrifying, and put in context the supernatural aspects of the Mariner himself, with the Wedding Guest needing to explicitly ask whether or not the Mariner is undead. The Mariner reassures the Wedding Guest that he is alive, as his punishment is that he must travel far and wide to tell his tale to those who need to hear it. He continues with his story and explains the solitude he felt as he was left alone with the corpses of the dead sailors on the deck, their eyes open and staring at him. The Mariner’s disconnection from the natural world, and from God, lends this scene purgatorial elements, with the Mariner trapped between Heaven and Hell. Unable to recognize the beauty of the nature that surrounds him, he is thereby unable to pray, as the beauty of the natural world is, according to the poem’s logic, of God’s making. After suffering from the week-long, dead-eyed curse, the Mariner now sees the slimy sea creatures as beautiful water snakes. His embracing of the Romantic means he is partially absolved of his sin and is now able to pray; in turn, the albatross drops into the sea, completing its return to nature and, by extension, to God.
