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 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3 Summary
The ship is stuck on the calm sea for a long time. The Mariner and the sailors are hot, weary, and thirsty. After a while, the Mariner sees something approaching. As it gets closer, he recognizes it, but he is unable to tell the sailors what it is, due to his inability to speak because of intense thirst. The Mariner then explains to the guest that, “I bit my arm and suck’d the blood, / And cry’d, A sail! a sail!” (7).
At first, the sailors are overjoyed that the ship is approaching, as they are now sure that they will be saved. However, their joy soon turns to terror as they wonder how the ship can be moving when there is no breeze and no tide. As it gets closer, the crew can see that it is only the skeleton of a ship: “And strait the sun was fleck’d with bars / (Heaven’s mother send us grace) / As if thro’ a dungeon grate he peer’d / With broad and burning face” (8). Through the ribs of the ship,the Mariner can see there are only two passengers aboard: Death, and Life-in-Death. Life-in-Death has white skin, yellow hair, and red lips. As their ship pulls up alongside the Mariner’s, the Mariner can see that they have been playing dice. Life-in-Death has won the soul of the Mariner, while Death has the souls of the sailors.
At sundown, as the moon comes up, the sailors face the Mariner, and with their eyes, curse him. One by one, they fall to the deck, dead: “Their souls did from their bodies fly, - / They fled to bliss or woe; / And every soul it pass’d me by, / Like the whiz of my Cross-bow” (10). The Mariner is now left alone on the ship to face his punishment.
Part 3 Analysis
The Mariner and the sailors are tortured as their boat strands, without wind, on the sea. As well as the heat and thirst, and being unable to speak, part of their punishment is the lack of hope as time goes by. This lack of hope is given a brief reprieve when the Mariner spots the ship approaching. However, hope quickly turns to horror when the ship gets closer and the Mariner sees that the vessel is effectively a ghostship. Unable to communicate the ship’s approach to the Sailors, the Mariner drinks his own blood, in order to lubricate his throat. A Christian interpretation of this action is that the drinking of the blood mimics the drinking of Christ’s blood, which can be consumed, literally or symbolically, in order to receive redemption. However, introducing Death and Life-in-Death into the poem is a move away from the theological and towards the supernatural. The transitional nature of Life-in-Death symbolizes the next step in the Mariner’s punishment, as the Mariner will be left to endure a living death. Still unable to speak, the sailors communicate their final hatred towards the Mariner through their eyes. While the fate of the sailors’ souls is left ambiguous at the end of the poem, their fate would seem to be better than that of the Mariner’s, with the latter left immortal but cursed. This fate of the Mariner’s arrives to him because, through his act of needlessly killing the albatross, he steps outside of the natural order of the world; in turn, he receives a fate that is unnatural, while the sailors, who don’t go against nature, die.
