Ancient Mariner

From the beginnings of human imagination, people have always held in interest between the state of reality and dreaming. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” depicts the journey of suffering and repentance of a sinning sailor who tells his tale to a brides groom at a wedding as a lyrical ballad. Particularly, the author’s use of liminal space to portray an eerie ambience and the indistinction between what is real and what is not contributes to the theme of imprisonment and suffering. Within the poem, Coleridge illustrates liminal space when the boat encounters a ghost ship, when the crew turns into zombies, and when the dead crew rises with their spirits ascending to the sky. After the killing the albatross, the crew remains at sea without wind nor navigation and sail for nowhere since the albatross brought good luck. Although, when the crew finally discover another ship, reality is not what it seems. A ghost ship appears in the waters, carrying two passengers representing the judge, jury, and executioner for the mariner’s sin. Death and the nightmare Life-in-Death are upon the ghost ship, seemingly gambling who get’s to punish

After the albatross falls from his neck, the crew’s spirits ascend into the sky like seraphs. Liminal space is presented by the way reality is warped into the line between heaven and earth. Without the clarity on whether the crew members actually moved in, Coleridge illustrates the mariner witnessing the ascendence, but the truth of what happened is not clear. The mariner is stuck within the physical and metaphysical world, which corresponds with the supernatural part of liminal space. Ultimately, liminal space appears when the mariner felt like he lost everything and does not know how to react to the complete isolation and the apparent unending