Essay About Strange Inhabitants And Political Satire

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A Different Traveler
Like many of his contemporaries, Samuel Coleridge was interested in travel and travel books he
read about exotic strangers in faraway places. As a young man he even joined a group planning a
utopian settlement in the United States. The scheme was abandoned, staying in England living in the
countryside where he attracted friends including the poet William Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy to join him. One of the most brilliant scholars and thinkers of his day
One of his best known poems, The Rime of the ancient mariner is describing a strange and ter-
ifying voyage to the edge of the earth. Like some earlier travel adventures it is a fantastical work, but
toward a different end. Such as Gulliver Travels and Robinson Crusoe. There are no message about
political satire or courageous survival here, but rather one of sin and repentance. Gulliver and Crusoe
face strange inhabitants, physacal adversity, and there is culture shock, Coleridges “hero” faces life in
death he sees ghostes.
Gulliver and Crusoe begin their adventures as victims of shiprecks. The Ancient Mariner has
caused the events that beset him. By committing an immoral act. When he kill an albatross that was
following their ship he triggers a series of frightening events. The only survivor of a frightful voyage
with a crew of ghostally sailors on a spectral sea. The intents old man now travels from land to land;
compelled to “teach” his tale to those who catch his eye the tail he teaches is enveloped in a mysti-
cal romantic story. but like the otherwise-carefree wedding guest, those who listen well and heed his
tail their lives will