The Rime Of The Christo-marine
When Samuel Coleridge set pen to paper, it is clear, he knew his bible well. In his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christian mythology and symbolism abound. The three main elements of the story, the Mariner, the Albatross, and the Sun, each play a role as Jesus. From the first stanza, Coleridge begins his biblical allusions and, through the Mariner's eyes, paints a vivid picture wrought with the Christian god and angelic hordes as recurring foci.
Coleridge begins his parallels with the setting, a wedding day. One of Christ's most famous miracles, that of turning water to wine, took place at the wedding at Cana, in Galilee. The Ancient Mariner is the quiet guest who performs a miracle ...
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Mariner tries to pray for salvation, he hears a demonic voice, like Lucifer: "I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;/But or ever a prayer had gushed,/A wicked whisper came, and made/My heart as dry as dust." [ln 244] As the ghost ship approaches, "I bit my arm, I sucked the blood," in reference to Jesus' use of the wine at the last supper as his own blood. When the spirits move the ship, "Slowly and smoothly went the ship/Moved onward from beneath," the Mariner is, in a sense, walking on water. The ending is the more ironic to consider that the Mariner, as a kind of Christ figure, is rescued by a Pilot, where Jesus died by Pontius Pilate, pronounced in the same way.
Coleridge then makes use of "holy" numbers, such as three and seven, on several occasions. Three is represented in the Holy Trinity: Father Son and Holy Spirit, while the seventh day is the Sabbatical. At the poem's opening, the weeding guest is picked out of three men in the second line, and is shortly ...
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is all that keeps life contained from grace, so the bars across the Sun (god) are fitting symbolism.
A biblical allusion referred to repeatedly is the similarities between the masts of a ship and the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. Describing the Sun's–and thus God's–ascent as they near the equator, "Higher and higher every day,/Till over the mast at noon." [ln 30] This imagery paints a vivid picture: from the Mariner's point-of-view on the deck, the sun is a brilliant halo over the mast and its crossbeam. As the ship encounters a storm, the ship bucks and sways: "With sloping masts and dipping prow,/As who pursued with yell and blow/Still treads the shadow of his ...
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"The Rime Of The Christo-marine." Essayworld.com. April 28, 2007. Accessed April 18, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Rime-Of-The-Christo-marine/64026.
"The Rime Of The Christo-marine." Essayworld.com. April 28, 2007. Accessed April 18, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Rime-Of-The-Christo-marine/64026.
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