"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and its Ties to Lucifer

We spent Wednesday in class talking about the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge, and after the class discussion I spent a lot of time thinking about it. After some careful consideration and re-reading the poem, I came to a rather interesting conclusion.

Throughout the poem, the action seems to bounce between good and evil, the Mariner never sure exactly which side he lies on. The very beginning of the Mariner’s story talks about the beauty of the sun, how “he shone bright,” for all the men on his ship (378). However, the story takes a dark turn when the Mariner shoots and kills a good omen, the albatross.

I would submit that the entire first half of the poem, if not the whole thing, is a telling of Lucifer’s fall, and God’s punishment afterwards. Now, going on this analysis there are two distinct alternatives for how the telling plays out. The first option is that the Albatross represents Lucifer, and the Mariner represents God; shooting the albatross with the crossbow is a physical representation of the angel Lucifer falling from grace, and his punishment is to not be present in the world to see humanity take its shape. While this is a very good argument, I’m much more partial to the second option. The second (and more probable) option is that the Mariner is Lucifer, and the Albatross a representation of God. The mariner, “with [his] crossbow” shoots the Albatross from the sky, killing it (380). The use of a crossbow in killing the Albatross is instrumental, because of its relationship with the cross. Lucifer, when he was cast to Hell, believed he fell because he loved God too much. The Mariner kills the physical representation of God with an item of significant religious imagery, physically demonstrating Lucifer’s overwhelming love for his Father, so much so that it hurts God.

Moreover, when the Mariner thinks all is lost, and he’ll never find home, he sees life, and says:

“Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes:

They moved in tracks of shining white,

And when they reared, the elfish light

Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

They coiled and swam; and every track

Was a flash of golden fire” (386).

That the Mariner welcomes the snakes and fire is no hallucination, or “just happy to see something” attitude. In essence, this can be seen as Lucifer accepting his place in Hell, and welcoming the gates to him, because he realizes that his power is indeed great enough to bring the gates of Hell to him. The Mariner delights in seeing these signs of evil, instead of cowering away, which greatly supports the hypothesis that the Mariner represents Lucifer, and the poem is a loose telling of his fall from grace.

Furthermore, the Mariner’s ultimate fate is to live in agony, so people know his story. He says, “That agony returns:/ And till my ghastly take is told,/ This heart within me burns” (396). This, really, would be Lucifer’s Hell on Earth. Rather than being allowed to rule his domain in Hell, no matter how dislikeable that really is, God forces Lucifer to live on the planet among those whom he refused to love in the first place (Lucifer told God that he could not love man more than God because they were violent creatures who didn’t deserve the love Lucifer had to give), and teach them of his Father, try to make them see why God is great. Because, Lucifer believes he still loves God, that God is great no matter the situation, or what he did to Lucifer. The Mariner even says, “For the dear God who loveth us,/ He made and loveth all” (397). Even in his greatest punishment, Lucifer sees how much God loves, and yet still refuses to love humanity with all the strength and conviction with which he loved God, and that is why he is doomed to his Hell, teaching those he hates about God and his love.

In a nutshell: the mariner is Lucifer (not Satan/the Devil, but Lucifer. Important distinction, because Lucifer is the archangel that fell from grace, Satan and Devil are the names we give to him to embody the evil we believe is in his soul) and the Albatross a physical representation of Lucifer’s betrayal of God and fall from grace.