THE MARINER AS A MUSE (FOR FRE
Through this complex poem it is no easy task to contrive one concise explanation that will sum up the poem. The Rhyme Of the Ancient Mariner has strong undertones of God the creator, the animals in his kingdom, and the basic emotional circumstances that make up human existence. While these are broad topics, they can be broken down into cause and effect situations using some of Freud's methodology in Ego Psychology. Freud explained the way the human mind uses defense mechanisms, and there are some examples of these mechanisms in "The Rhyme Of the Ancient Mariner." Freud's ideas on displacement, rationalization, and projection can be used to understand some of the actions seen in the poem. The poem starts out in the present day when the Mariner, uninvited, attends a wedding reception where he takes aside one of the guests and begins to spin his tale of a see adventure which appears to be part fact, hallucination, and religion. The mariner and his fellow seamen are stranded in the middle of the ocean with no wind. There boat has not moved in weeks, the ocean is calm and they are at natures (Gods) mercy. When suddenly out of the blue comes a glorious albatross. In an almost magical w
The Mariner does something similar by telling his story to the man at the wedding. The Mariner is feeling guilty because he killed the albatross, which was a sin against God. God wants us to respect all of his creatures and by killing the bird he has disrespected God and needs to get those feelings out in order to feel better. By telling the wedding guest to respect all of Gods creatures he is making the wedding guest feel guilty for things he is not responsible for. The Mariner has projected the blame onto the wedding guest and distanced himself from the guilt. ay the sails flood with wind and the sea changes from a calm portrait of water into a lively swell of waves and white caps. Almost all the crew begins to rejoice in the albatross and the whether which they believe it brought. Only the Ancient Mariner is anything but happy over the bird's presence and he shoots the bird with a harpoon, killing it. The reason the Mariner killed the bird is not emphasized but a mask of a reason is that he thought the bird was responsible for the bad whether. The other sailors turn on the Mariner blaming him for the return of the bad whether by shooting the albatross. They hang the carcass of the Albatross around his neck as a reminder of his crime and are plagued with another calm of the whether. As time goes on most of the crew on the ship die and the mariner begins to hallucinate due to his dehydration and his miserable state. Soon the Mariner is the only one left on the ship and he begins to fear that all hope is lost. As the Mariner begins to contemplate his situation he turns to God and blesses all the creatures in the world including his dead comrades, the ugly hallucinations he has, and the albatross. After he makes his peace with God the albatross falls from his neck, the skeletons of his crewmembers return to life, and the wind pushes his sails homeward. As we see the Mariner go through his situations it is easy to gloss over them and not immediately relate them to Freud's view on ego psychology. After breaking down eac
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Approximate Word count = 1384
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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