More handpicked essays just for you.
The life of the ancient mariner critical analysis
The life of the ancient mariner critical analysis
The life of the ancient mariner critical analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Content and theme of Frankenstein rivaled to Rime of the Ancient Mariner
English novelist Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and English poet Samuel Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner share very closely tied themes respectively in their own literary worlds. Through both novel and poem, in the eyes of each Victor Frankenstein and the Mariner three themes recur within. Knowledge, Frankenstein is addicted to knowledge in younger pursuits. The Mariner is cursed on the spread of knowledge of his obliterate tale of desolation through the wedding guest. Desolation, Frankenstein constantly torn by guilt wears himself to illness and disconnection from surrounding life. The Mariner in his lonely pursuit with his dead shipmates, left to be skewered by the torment of loneliness. Nature plays a crucial role in both stories, while traveling European countryside, the Mariner has a predilection towards nature through ideas of the Albatross, the ocean, water snakes, all leading to the appreciation of nature.
Knowledge, part of the big three observed themes is as important to any. You begin Frankenstein with learning of Victors lustful bearing for the adaption of becoming knowledgeable in his obtained passions. First seen with an obsession of the natural world and the philosophy around it. Knowledge forms his transformation from seeker to pioneer, while discovering electricity and chemistry. In Rime of the Ancient Mariner through the Mariner, Coleridge takes emphasis on the Natural world and the Spiritual world, Physical and Metaphysical. To portray knowledge of the Albatross being a physical creature rather than spiritual being. Liminability was used to dictate the difference in setting of story. Coleridge uses the element of storyte...
... middle of paper ...
...n the sailors are swept by a storm into the rime. The ice is mast high, and the captain cannot steer the ship through it. The sailors confinement in the disorienting rime foreshadows the Ancient Mariner's later imprisonment within a bewildered limbo-esq existence. In the beginning of the poem, the ship is a vehicle of adventure, and the sailors set out in one another's happy company. However, once the Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross, it quickly becomes a prison. Without wind to sail the ship, the sailors lose all control over their fate. They are cut off from civilization, even though they have each other's company. They are imprisoned further by thirst, which silences them and effectively puts them in isolation; they are denied the basic human ability to communicate. When the other sailors drop dead, the ship becomes a private prison for the Ancient Mariner.
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley highlights on the experiences her characters undergo through the internal war of passion and responsibility. Victor Frankenstein lets his eagerness of knowledge and creating life get so out of hand that he fails to realize what the outcome of such a creature would affect humankind. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, highlights on how Frankenstein’s passion of knowledge is what ultimately causes the decline of his health and the death of him and his loved ones.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein concludes with a series of speeches from Victor Frankenstein and the Creature to Captain Walton, including one where Frankenstein expends his physical strength to persuade Walton’s crew to complete their mission. This speech is striking considering Frankenstein’s previous dangerously ambitious and irresponsible actions. His speech is one of heroics and sublimity, two major values of the Romantic poet. Reading Frankenstein as a reflection of the Romantic poets who surrounded Mary Shelley while she wrote the novel, Frankenstein’s speech is one of a failed Romantic poet – one who takes Shelley’s contemporaries’ ideals too far. Shelley highlights the irony of Frankenstein’s speech through his uncharacteristic use of
...ion of the situation to the Ancient Mariner. Moreover, the way in which the dialogue is presented, makes the structure seems more of a script of a play. The structure of the poem is a key characteristic in displaying the theme, for by telling the story as a personal experience, it helps the reader understand the moral and theme intended as a warning to people.
Mary Shelley, in her novel Frankenstein mentions Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in several instances, undoubtedly connecting her character, Victor Frankenstein, to the character of the Ancient Mariner. There are several critics, such as Michelle Levy and Sarah Goodwin, who support the idea that Frankenstein and the Mariner share a common background. Enough so, that Shelley’s mention of the Mariner in her novel is acceptable. This is true in some ways regarding their tragic backgrounds and how both characters end up confessing their actions to others. However, Frankenstein and the Mariner have many differences when it comes down to how they ended up in their tragic situations and even what means to an end they hope to achieve by sharing their tragic stories. The biggest differences being, knowledge of what could come from their actions, and how they accept the responsibility of the deaths they caused. Shelley was undoubtedly influenced by Coleridge’s poem and while her use of the poem in her novel is interesting, and the notion of comparing the action of confession and equal lack of social “belongingness” between Frankenstein and the Mariner are comparable, the two characters run the risk of being too different to compare when thought about in depth.
The “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” is the story of a gruff, grumpy, and old sailor. In the story he tells people of a wedding. When he suddenly killed an Albatross on a voyage for no reason at all. The Albatross that was shot was innocent. The Mariner ended up returning for a big punishment, which he said
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is swollen with imagery of life, lifelessness, and death but not with any traditional descriptions. Coleridge is able to change the nature of death and life to fit his needs and the needs of his story. At the conclusion of the poem we the reader and the wedding guest are left “sadder and a wiser man” (Line 624) with lesson of what can happen if you are not good to your fellow creatures. While this moral holds true to the cause of the curse through the death of the Albatross it seems a strange ending to a much more morbid story. The blurring and crossing over of concrete concept is the real gift the reader is left to ponder. This talent for manipulation adds to the attraction of the poem and to the lengthened popularity of Coleridge’s works.
In Lisa Nocks article appropriately titled “Frankenstein, in a better light,” she takes us through a view of the characters in the eyes of the author Mary Shelly. The name Frankenstein conjures up feeling of monsters and horror however, the monster could be a metaphor for the time period of which the book was written according to Nocks. The article implies that the book was geared more towards science because scientific treatises were popular readings among the educated classes, of which Shelley was a member of. Shelley, whose father was wealthy and had an extensive library, was encouraged to self-educate, which gave her knowledge of contemporary science and philosophy, which also influenced Frankenstein as well as circumstances of her life.
Frankenstein is a story of a creation of a monster, however readers might realize that there is not only one, but more in the story. The story unfolds these “monsters” when Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, alludes to two references in her story, a poem and a book. The former is “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge and the latter is “Paradise Lost” by John Milton. Shelley mimics two important concepts from both Coleridge’s and Milton’s book to provide readers a bigger understanding of Frankenstein.
Overall “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is poem that seems like a simple story told by a sailor about his woes at sea. But Coleridge uses many details to make symbols throughout the story for the reader to interpret and see the connections between it and religion. Whether it be through the Christ like albatross, which most would just see as a simple bird, or the woman on the boat showing how the lifestyle might be fun but ultimate leads to nothing we see that these small details create a bigger story than what is just on the cover.
Mary Shelley, with her brilliant tale of mankind's obsession with two opposing forces: creation and science, continues to draw readers with Frankenstein's many meanings and effect on society. Frankenstein has had a major influence across literature and pop culture and was one of the major contributors to a completely new genre of horror. Frankenstein is most famous for being arguably considered the first fully-realized science fiction novel. In Frankenstein, some of the main concepts behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be found. Mary Shelley was a colleague of many Romantic poets such as her husband Percy Shelley, and their friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, even though the themes within Frankenstein are darker than their brighter subjects and poems. Still, she was very influenced by Romantics and the Romantic Period, and readers can find many examples of Romanticism in this book. Some people actually argue that Frankenstein “initiates a rethinking of romantic rhetoric”1, or is a more cultured novel than the writings of other Romantics. Shelley questions and interacts with the classic Romantic tropes, causing this rethink of a novel that goes deeper into societal history than it appears. For example, the introduction of Gothic ideas to Frankenstein challenges the typical stereotyped assumptions of Romanticism, giving new meaning and context to the novel. Mary Shelley challenges Romanticism by highlighting certain aspects of the movement while questioning and interacting with the Romantic movement through her writing.
Mary Shelley discusses many important themes in her famous novel Frankenstein. She presents these themes through the characters and their actions, and many of them represent occurrences from her own life. Many of the themes present debateable issues, and Shelley's thoughts on them. Three of the most important themes in the novel are birth and creation; alienation; and the family and the domestic affections.
In the Romantic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, the selection in chapter five recounting the birth of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster plays a vital role in explaining the relationship between the doctor and his creation. Shelley’s use of literary contrast and Gothic diction eloquently set the scene of Frankenstein’s hard work and ambition coming to life, only to transform his way of thinking about the world forever with its first breath.
The role of the imagination in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein is a vital when defining the work as Romantic. Though Shelley incorporates aspects that resemble the Enlightenment period, she relies on the imagination. The power of the imagination is exemplified in the novel through both Victor and the Creature as each embarks to accomplish their separate goals of scientific fame and accomplishing human relationships. The origin of the tale also emphasizes the role of the imagination as Shelley describes it in her “Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition (1831)”. Imagination in the text is also relatable to other iconic works of the Romantic Period such as S. T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria in which he defines Primary and Secondary imagination. The story as a whole is completely Romantic in that it is filled with impossibilities that seem to have come from a fairy tale. The imaginative quality of the plot itself is a far cry from the stiff subject matter of the Enlightenment period. Frankenstein is wholly a work of Romanticism both from the outside of the tale and within the plot. Shelley created the story in a moment of Primary imagination filling it with impossibilities that can only be called fantastical. Imagining notoriety leads Victor to forge the creature; the creature imagines the joy of having human relationships. The driving factor of the tale is the imagination: imagining fame, imagining relationships and imagining the satisfaction of revenge. Shelley’s use of the imagination is a direct contradiction to the themes of logic and reason that ruled the Enlightenment Period.
As the ancient Mariner described his adventures at sea to the Wedding-Guest, the Guest became saddened because he identified his own selfish ways with those of the Mariner. The mariner told the Guest that he and his ship-mates were lucky because at the beginning of their voyage they had good weather. The mariner only saw what was on the surface -- he did not see the good weather as evidence that Someone was guiding them. Also, when he shot the Albatross, the Mariner did not have any reason for doing so. The Albatross did nothing wrong, yet the Mariner thought nothing of it and without thinking of the significance of the act, he killed the bird. At this, the Guest was reminded of how self-absorbed he, too, was, and the sinful nature of man. At the beginning of the poem he was very much intent on arriving at the wedding on time. He did not care at all about what it was that the Mariner had to tell him; he did not want to be detained even if the Mariner was in trouble. Instead, he spoke rudely to the mariner, calling him a "gray-beard loon", and tried to go on his own way.
However, in the two works by Coleridge, the imagination takes on different roles in each world. In the Ancient Mariner, the imagination is the substance that holds all life together, much like how the millio...