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 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5 Summary
Now that he has undergone a spiritual awakening, and has learned to appreciate the beauty of nature, the Mariner is also able to pray and to fall asleep: “O sleep, it is a gentle thing / Belov’d from pole to pole! / To Mary-queen the praise be yeven / She sent the gentle sleep from heaven / That slid into my soul’ (13). As the Mariner sleeps, he dreams that it’s raining; when he wakes up, he finds that it actually is. He drinks and quenches his thirst. However, after he has finished drinking, and is feeling quenched, the Mariner sees that the wind is becoming wild. The dead sailors reanimate; they do not speak or move their eyes, and instead start working, and begin to sail the ship. The Wedding Guest is horrified at this revelation, but the Mariner tells him that it is angels, not demons, that have restored the sailors’ dead bodies.
The Mariner then tells the Wedding Guest that when the sun rose, the angels also rose from the sailors’ bodies and were flying and singing like a choir of birds. When they stop, the ships sails onward, despite there being no wind. The angels have instructed the Lonesome Spirit from the South Pole to guide the ship home.
All of a sudden, the Mariner hears voices. These are the First Voice and the Second Voice. They are confirming with each other that it is he, the Mariner, who has killed the Albatross. One says to the other: “Quoth he the man hath penance done, / And penance more will do” (18).
Part 5 Analysis
The Mariner’s spiritual awakening has lifted the curse and partially absolved him; rain arrives as proof of the Mariner’s redemption. He drinks and is finally able to fall asleep—two things that a normal person, in line with the natural world, does daily.
Although the storm does not reach the ship, the Mariner is horrified as the supernatural makes another appearance and the dead sailors, without speaking or moving their eyes, get up and start working. One can make the case that this image, created by angels—the servants of God—arrives to a) restore the fear of the God in the Mariner, and b) put the Mariner on his path back toward the natural world, and, by extension, realignment with Christianity. After the angels have flown away, the ship continues to move forward (towards home) steered by the spirit from the South Pole.
When the Mariner hears the First Voice and Second Voice, it is unclear whether they are spiritual or supernatural in nature. Possible readings of ownership of these voices are that a) the voices are spirits, and b) the Second Voice is God, and the First Voice is Nature, as the Second Voice is more knowledgeable, and the First Voice offers that the Mariner has upset a spirit through his slaying of the albatross. The voices acknowledge to each other that it was the Mariner who shot the albatross and reveal to the Mariner that although he has already suffered, his penance is not over.
