Coleridge’s Treatment of Supernatural in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

S.T Coleridge is the greatest English poet of supernaturalism and his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best poems of supernatural ever written in English literature. As we go through the poem, there is a “willing suspension of disbelief” on our part.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Theme

The Rime of The Ancient Mariner is probably the longest sonnet composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poem The Rime of The Ancient Mariner is a lyrical ballad. A ballad is a rhyme as a story, which can be sung. Sin and repentance are the focal topics of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. A dreadful sin executes The Mariner and that was he killed the albatross bird, one of God's dearest animals. He dedicates his life to caution people about the perils of transgression, utilizing his own life as an advisory story.

supernatural elements in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Coleridge as a Supernatural Poet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry is characterized by the supernatural. In this conception of the supernatural Coleridge is systematically romantic. He generates a different and exotic magnificence from the pictures stored in his imagination. It "lives and breathes before the eyes" and yet it is fanciful, improbable, and even impossible. One essential factor in understanding the exotic and fantastic nature of the supernatural in his poems is to realize The Ancient Mariner and Christabel were indirectly influenced by his opium dreams and Kubla Khan. The immensity of The Ancient Mariner lies mainly in the technique by which the supernatural has been made credible and convincing. There are, no confusion, a number of difficult, unbelievable, and bizarre conditions in the poem.

Reason why Coleridge use of the Supernatural in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Coleridge makes the normal to appear to be supernatural by crediting to nature something of the uncommon force and capability of the supernatural. Coleridge is most popular for his haunting ballad, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the dream like Kubla Khan and the unfinished Christabel.

Some Supernatural elements in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

As we know, several horrific supernatural elements seal the fate of the ship and crew--slimy snakes from the bottom of the sea come to the ship; a ghost-ship, with the figures of Death and Death-in-Life, comes and the whole crew dies (Death) but the Mariner remains thriving (Death-in-Life).

Coleridge’s Treatment of Supernatural in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Treatment of Supernatural Elements in The Rime of The Ancient Mariner

The story of the ancient Mariner is an unbelievable one. Up to the killing of the albatross, everything around the Mariner’s ship is natural, but after the killing unbelievable and supernatural things began to happen. First of all, Coleridge aroused the sense of supernatural mystery by transporting us to distant times and remote places. After the killing of the albatross, the mariner’s ship entered into a silent sea where the ship remained unmoving as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Subsequently he finds himself:

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!”

Coleridge poetry marks an epoch in the poetry of supernatural. The appearance of the spectre ship is a super natural element. The spectre ship comes with two supernatural figures on its deck. One is “Death” and the other is “Life-in-Death”. Here the poet describes a mood of uncanny fear in the minds of the readers by describing the physical appearance of the “Life-in-Death” in the following manner:

“Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her looks were yellow as gold;

Her skin was as white as leprosy

The night-mare Life-in-Death was she

Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”

The manner of the death of two hundred sailors is also supernatural. However, the most supernatural event in the whole poem is the coming back to life of the dead sailors. We are terrified here when we read the following lines:

“The dead men gave a groan

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,

Nor spake nor moved their eyes

They raised their limbs like lifeless tools

We were as ghasty crew.”

The manner of falling of the dead albatross from the Mariner’s neck and the talking of the two voices in the air are equally supernatural events. Coleridge’s treatment of supernatural is a symbol of the mystery of life. It is a symbol of love which binds man, bird and beast and which is the life of all creation.

Thus Coleridge presented supernatural elements in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in such a way that they appeared to be real. The air of reality is imparted by the poet by skillfully blending natural and supernatural phenomena. In one stroke Coleridge presents a skeleton ship, the spectre sea, the woman and her death mate, the coming back to life of the ship’s crew and the polar spirits talking to one another. But these supernatural incidents have not been left without their association with reality.