The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is filled with vivid,
phantasmagoric, and otherworldly imagery. Find one such example of vivid
imagery, quote it and explain what words really helped you to see the scene. A link to the poem is given below. ( The deadline to post a response is midnight, September 23, 2014.)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253
4 comments:
"Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold."
I believe Coleridge's use of imagery in this selection paints a wonderful picture of who LIFE-IN-DEATH is. Her lips were red, her locks were yellow as gold: these are both two wonderful examples that show me exactly what LIFE-IN-DEATH is and why she is so terrifying.
"They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise" (part V)
In this stanza, Coleridge depicts a scene of the mariners dead crew, rising from their dead slumber, in a way that we would expect to see corpses rise. Their eyes did not move shows us makes the audience think of a person with their eyes rolled back in their sockets to show the white of their eyes. The Mariner describes as a dream as most people would because he does not believe this himself.
Travis Stennett
"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."
This is an important moment in the poem because it is describing the scene the Mariner saw before he blessed the snakes, which led to his redemption. "Blue, glossy green, and velvet black" are all describing the look of the snakes, and it makes me picture them as beautiful despite the fact that they are considered "beasts", which is what Coleridge is trying to convey. "They coiled and swam" is imagery that expresses movement and it really helped me picture the scene the Mariner was witnessing.
Holly McKenzie
"O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea."
In this stanza, Coleridge is conveying the power of prayer and blessings. It shows the importance of blessing nature and how it can start to pull someone from the evil. This places the image of him doing good by realizing the beauty of the water snakes and by blessing them, God gives him the reward of the Albatross falling off of his neck.
Jessalynn Jarrell
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