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Voice In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

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Even though Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an influential piece of poetry in the English language, it's still a doozy of a confusing read. It's about an old sailor who stops a wedding guest from joining a celebration of marriage. Upon their meeting, he says, "I know you want to get your drink and your dance on, but now I'm going to tell you a long story about how I got my entire crew killed and almost died myself because I acted like a jerk while sailing the far reaches of the globe."
The chances are that this poem is unlike anything you've read before. It will probably leave you with a bunch of questions: Why does Coleridge speak in such an old-fashioned voice? Why does the poem sound so corny? Did Coleridge think …show more content…

It's one thing to mess up because you haven't thought through the consequences of your action. It's quite another to think, "Yeah, if I do this, it's going to cause huge problems for me, and I'm going to wish I hadn't done it, but I'm going to do it anyway."

Maybe your parents said that if you went out a certain night you'd be grounded for a month, but you decide to do it anyway, knowing full well that your parents will find out, and it totally won't be worth it. That's a trivial example. How about if a close friend or family member tries to help you, and for no apparent reason, you do something nasty that drives them away? That's more like it.

The Mariner's act of shooting the albatross (that had once brought good luck to his ship) is the mother of irrational, self-defeating acts. He never offers a good explanation for why he does it, and his crewmates get so upset that they hang the dead albatross around his neck as a burden, so he won't forget what he did. To have an albatross around your neck is to have a constant reminder of a big mistake you made. Instead of the gift that keeps on giving, it's the blunder that keeps on taking. As in, "I spent all my money on that motorcycle because I thought it would be cool, but now I can't sell it, and it's too expensive to maintain. That thing is just an albatross around my

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