Group Study Guide Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Part 1. What is going on? Be sure you can answer these questions.
1. What aspect of the mariner seems to cast a spell over the wedding guest?
2. Why does the ship sail to "the land of ice and fearful sounds"?
3. How does the coming of the albatross apparently affect the ship's course?
4. Why do the mariner's shipmates first condemn his killing of the albatross, then approve of it?
5. Later, why do they hang it on his neck?
6. As the albatross begins to be avenged, what effects are seen in the natural world?
7. What supernatural force is at work?
8. As a ship nears, how does the mariner manage to cry out? What details reveal it as a ghost ship?
9. Describe the appearance of its crew and their effect on the mariner and his companions.
10. At this point, why is the wedding gust suddenly fearful? How does the mariner reassure him?
11. How long does the mariner suffer "Alone on a wide, wide sea" and under whose curse?
12. What act finally enables the mariner to pray? Was it a spontaneous or a premeditated decision?
13. How does nature reflect the change in the mariner?
14. With the crew dead, how is the ship manned? What spiritual agencies are involved?
15. Now that he has dropped the guilty weight of the albatross, is the mariner forgiven and released from suffering? Explain.
16. At what point in the journey is the curse dispelled?
17. What elements of the supernatural are described in this part of the poem?
18. What finally happens to the ship, and how is the mariner saved?
19. Why is the pilot's boy frightened?
20. What service does the hermit perform?
21. What is the mariner's final doom or sentence?
22. What strange power does he have?
23. How does the mariner's tale affect the wedding guest?
Part 2. For Discussion:

1.If this is a poem which is in part about guilt and expiation, what's the crime? What does it mean to kill an albatross? You might consider:

  • the description of the albatross itself, lines 63-79
  • the mariner's motives for killing the albatross
  • the state that follows from the killing of the albatross, 115-142, 171-198, 232-248
  • what it takes to begin to break the spell, 272-291
  • where are the mariners going in the first place? why?
  1. Why does blessing the water snakes free the Mariner from the curse imposed on him for killing the Albatross?
  2. Why is it part of the ancient mariner's penance that he must tell his story to strangers?
  3. After hearing the Mariner's tale, why is the Wedding Guest both "a sadder and a wiser man"?
  4. Who or what is responsible for the curse against the Mariner?
  5. Why does the Mariner get to survive to voyage when all the sailors die? After all, he was the one who shot the albatross?
  6. What does "Life-in-Death" represent, and what is the result of her winning the dice match with Death?
  7. What does the albatross symbolize, and why does the Mariner decide to kill it?
  8. Ideas about what Coleridge is saying?