British Literature 2 Paper on Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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British Literature 2 19 April 2013 Samuel Coleridge and Ghostly Imagery in Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Coleridge introduced ghostly imagery and reflects a sense of superstition to his readers through his poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poem begins with men walking into a wedding when suddenly an older man with a pirate-like appearance stops one of the guests. The old man, or mariner, was capable of pulling his listener in due to the intriguing glitter in his eye. The individual listening couldn’t even move because he was already drawn into the mariner’s different appearance and elegant approach to his storyline. He begins his story on a ship that is headed south and followed by a terrible storm. The crew was terrified of the cold storm engulfing their ship until they came across an Albatross bird. Supposedly, this bird was good luck to the sailors since it followed them through the storm and into foggy, but better weather that supported the ship with blowing wind. The mariner was against any idea that this bird could bring such good luck, and decided to shoot it down with his crossbow to rid of the crew’s idea that the sole reason why the ship cleared the storm was because of the Albatross. When the crew first found out about the Albatross losing its life, they were furious. But then, the ship began to clear out of the fog that had been following them and the crew realized it was the Albatross that brought the foggy weather, not the wind. This is the beginning of the superstitious ideas the crew had about the Albatross. Of course, the mariner rejects the entire idea of an Albatross bringing bad luck or good luck to the ship. This rejection of the superstition relates to William Wordsworth’s style of the ordinary man. A literary critic, named William Hazlitt, said that the poems of Lyrical Ballads offered “the sense of a new style and a

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