Summary of The Rime Of Ancient Mariner
Three guys are on the way to a wedding celebration when an
old sailor (the Mariner) stops one of them at the door (we 'll call him the
Wedding Guest). Using his hypnotic eyes to hold the attention of the Wedding
Guest, he starts telling a story about a disastrous journey he took. The
Wedding Guest really wants to go party, but he can 't pry himself away from
this grizzled old mariner. The Mariner begins his story. They left port, and
the ship sailed down near Antarctica to get away from a bad storm, but then
they get caught in a dangerous, foggy ice field. An albatross shows up to steer
them through the fog and provide good winds, but then the Mariner decides to
shoot it. Oops.
Pretty soon the sailors lose their wind, and it gets really
hot. They run out of water, and everyone blames the Mariner. The ship seems to
be haunted by a bad spirit, and weird stuff starts appearing, like slimy
creatures that walk on the ocean. The Mariner 's crewmates decide to hang the
dead albatross around his neck to remind him of his error.
Everyone is literally dying of thirst. The Mariner sees
another ship 's sail at a distance. He wants to yell out, but his mouth is too
dry, so he sucks some of his own blood to moisten his lips. He 's like, "A
ship! We 're saved." Sadly, the ship is a ghost ship piloted by two
spirits, Death and Life-in-Death, who have to be the last people you 'd want to
meet on a journey. Everyone on the Mariner 's ship dies.
The wedding guest realizes, "Ah! You 're a ghost!"
But the Mariner says, "Well, actually, I was the only one who didn 't
die." He continues his story: he 's on a boat with a lot of dead bodies,
surrounded by an ocean full of slimy things. Worse, these slimy things are
nasty water snakes. But the Mariner escapes his curse by unconsciously blessing
the hideous snakes, and the albatross drops off his neck into the ocean.
The Mariner falls into a sweet sleep, and it finally rains
when he wakes up. A storm strikes up in the distance, and all the dead sailors
rise like zombies to pilot the ship. The sailors don 't actually come back to
life. Instead, angels fill their bodies, and another supernatural spirit under
the ocean seems to push the boat. The Mariner faints and hears two voices
talking about how he killed the albatross and still has more penance to do.
These two mysterious voices explain how the ship is moving.
After a speedy journey, the ship ends up back in port again.
The Mariner sees angels standing next to the bodies of all his crewmates. Then
a rescue boat shows up to take him back to shore. The Mariner is happy that a
guy called "the hermit" is on the rescue boat. The hermit is in a good
mood. All of a sudden there 's a loud noise, and the Mariner 's ship sinks. The
hermit 's boat picks up the Mariner.
When they get on shore, the Mariner is desperate to tell his
story to the hermit. He feels a terrible pain until the story had been told.
In fact, the Mariner says that he still has the same painful
need to tell his story, which is why he stopped the Wedding Guest on this
occasion. Wrapping up, the Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that he needs to
learn how to say his prayers and love other people and things. Then the Mariner
leaves, and the Wedding Guest no longer wants to enter the wedding. He goes
home and wakes up the next day, as the famous last lines go, "a sadder and
a wiser man."
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