The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Alternation of real/unreal elements to confer a degree of credibility on the narration, without weakening the sense of horror and supernatural mystery it conveys to the reader:

Real

Unreal

- the opening setting: a wedding feast;

- hints at the precise position of the sun in the sky according to the hemisphere in which the ship is sailing;

- the weather suddenly changes, as it often happens at sea;

- a boat appears with a pilot who savers the Mariner from the shipwreck.

Nature is perceived as deformed and intensified:

a) the ice glistens with strange colours and gives out nightmarish sounds;

b) the sun looks bloody and the moon extraordinarily white;

c) the sea is either slimy or burning with strange colours;

d) the wind suddenly becomes noiseless and motionless though still pushing the ship on.

Unreal, fantastic and nightmarish world, peopled with spirits, dead men and strange animals.
The Mariner's way of speaking is full of archaisms, which brings the reader back into an imaginary past;
Hint at medieval and oriental superstitions: the albatross is a somewhat mystical bird;
The hint at the medieval Danse macabre: (the spectre ship with Death and Life-in-Death on board, a woman symbolising leprosy, a medieval calamity).
A lot of "borrowings" from the nightmarish world of some Gothic novels.

SOME INTERPRETATIONS:

the sea voyage is an allegory of life, in which the evil deed of a single person falls on others;

a moral parable of man, from original sin (the killing) through punishment (isolation), repentance (the blessing of the water snakes) and penitence (the obsessive repetition of the story), to his final redemption;

the conflict between man and nature.

the contrast between rationality/the power of reason (sunlight, under which the main bad events take place) and irrationality/the power of imagination (moonlight, when the main good events occur);

the relation of art to life, exploring the claims and the nature of imagination.