Moral Warning in Symbol

Moral warning in symbol

Coleridge belonged to the first generation of the English Romantics. In his poems he deals with the supernatural, with mysterious situations, unexpected happenings which are nevertheless presented as probable by the author who links them to a certain dramatic truth referring to human nature. His ballads are the products of an imagination that knows no limits. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner bounds myth with morality and vision. The protagonist of  the poem gradually proves to be the representative of Man himself while his thrilling little by little turns into the allegory of human existence. The whole poem is built on a system of symbols. The four mythical elements: air, water, land and fire are the basic symbols interwoven with several other symbols that complete their meaning. Land and water in their different states represent the frame of human existence. The sea seems to prevail over the land being presented as an open space where everything  becomes  becomes possible. possible. Once having left their safe homes on land the sailors sailors enter a mysterious mysterious world of adventure dominated by water. The death of the Albatross is caused by crime which demands punishment. Punishment comes not from the world of the moral beings but from  Nature itself. itself. Lack of water, water, thirst cause suffering suffering and the sufferance sufferance of his innocent mates causes remorse to the Ancient Mariner whose sin seems to have been inspired by the evil which is an inherent part of the human soul. Water is the origin of life and the Albatross has  belonged to the water-world water-world as well as the snakes. snakes. The life of non-human beings is sacred in this poetic universe whose center is the harmony of nature. By killing the Albatross the Mariner broke not only moral but also natural rules therefore Nature itself will punish him. His  punishment  punishment comes through the pain and suffering suffering of his mates, from the stillness stillness of the ship which predicts death, from the sight of ice – a kind of dead water that cannot support any life –  when they rally need water, and finally from the death of his mates which puts an end to the suffering of the innocent human beings and increases the remorse and the agony of the guilt of  the protagonist. If life seems to be one of the most important values presented by the poem together together with the harmony of the universe, death paradoxically paradoxically is not a punishment punishment but means of escaping pain. Coleridge creates a very intensive symbol, death-in –life which is worse than “death” proper. The Ancient Mariner is sentenced to death-in-life because he has disturbed the order of the universe by his murder. He isn’t reprieved until he learns his lesson, manly that all living things have been divinely created and have an equally important place in the universe, so no man has the right to kill any of them. When the Ancient Mariner realizes the beauty of the water snakes – his fellow  beings in creation creation – his punishment punishment ends, life comes through through movement, movement, sleep – a healing descent into the unconscious as a condition of rebirth – and rain as the cleansing element for  the Christian baptism.