Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is written in a way that requires the reader to temporarily suspend disbelief in order to understand it. The poem tells the tale of a Mariner who confesses his sin and seeks forgiveness from God to a man referred to as the “Wedding Guest.” The Mariner is supposedly responsible for the death of all the crew on his ship because he killed a creature that was supposed to bring them the wind they needed to power the sails. The poem’s purpose is to encourage the reader to believe the tale that Coleridge tells.
Coleridge wrote the poem to induce the reader with what he calls a willing suspension of disbelief.” The poem is written in a way that expects the reader to temporarily believe the almost unbelievable story. The reason for this is that the Mariner is trying to get the point of forgiveness from God across to the reader. If the reader chooses not to believe the story behind the poem, they will not understand the effect of the point of the tale. Coleridge’s main point in writing the story was to help people understand forgiveness by understanding the poem. The Mariner tells his tale to a “Wedding Guest” who has no choice but to listen and believe.
The Wedding Guest” in the poem represents “everyman” in the sense that everyone is to be at the marriage of the Mariner to life. The reader is to follow, live, and participate with the idea of the poem. Coleridge tells of a Mariner on a ship who sins against God and is cursed. This curse, the killing of an Albatross – one of God’s creatures – costs the entire crew their lives. However, the Mariner lives so that he can realize what he has done and be given a chance to ask forgiveness for his sin. The deaths occurred when a ship was sighted, and on it, two women-like figures were playing dice. Life won the Mariner, and death got the crew.
Until he began to pray and ask for forgiveness, the crew’s souls couldn’t enter Heaven. But once he did, the curse was broken, his life was saved, and Angels came down from Heaven and took the crew’s souls with them. He had become a saved man. The whole point of the story becomes clear in the following lines: Farewell, farewell! but this I tell to thee, thou Wedding Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best all things both great and small; for the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”
The Mariner, whose eye is bright, whose beard with age is hoar, is gone. And now the Wedding Guest turned from the bridegroom’s door. He went like one that hath been stunned and is of sense forlorn. A sadder and wiser man, he rose the morrow morn.” (610-625) In these closing lines, Coleridge sums up the poem. He tells the Wedding Guest how to live a good life with God and to respect all things that God creates. The Mariner teaches what he learned on his voyage in these lines. It tells how the Wedding Guest left after hearing the entire Mariner’s tale and became a wise man.
What this meant is that he left understanding the Mariner’s words and learned from the Mariner’s mistakes. The Mariner had done his job in retelling his tale. Coleridge did a good job of writing the poem in a way that the reader would be forced to temporarily believe it without even realizing it. In a certain sense, you could say that through the tale, he placed the fear of God” in people, making them more likely to believe the story. When people are fearful of something, they have more of a tendency to fall prey to it, and Coleridge takes advantage of this to get his point across. The poem is written brilliantly, curving the reader to think in whatever manner Coleridge wants.
The poem was written to try to get people to temporarily believe a story that would not normally be believable, and it does just that. Coleridge wanted people to understand the Mariner, relate to him, and understand him. He conveyed his point about religion to the reader by making them subconsciously fall prey to the images and thoughts he instilled in their minds. The poem, for the most part, does as Coleridge intended and gets the reader to at least understand and believe the tale that the Mariner has to tell.
