“Dubliners” is a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce in which the author analyses the failure of self-realisation of inhabitants of Dublin in biographical and in psychological ways. The novel was originally turned down by publishers because they considered it immoral for its portrait of the Irish city. Joyce treats in “Dubliners” the paralysis of will in four stages: childhood, youth, maturity and public life. The paralysis of will is the courage and self-knowledge that leads ordinary men and women to accept the limitations imposed by the social context they live in. In “Dubliners” the style is both realistic - to the degree of perfectly recreating characters and idioms of contemporary Dublin - and symbolic – giving the common object unforeseen depth and a new meaning in order to show a new view of reality. Joyce defines this effect “epiphany” which indicates that moment when a simple fact suddenly explodes with meaning and makes a person realise his / her condi
Introduction
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, written by Samuel T. Coleridge, is a ballad typically Romantic in that it has analogues with other tales in folklore and ballads.It may be defined as a mixture of Gothic romance, travel literature which supplies the exotic, and traditional ballad. This poem is full of important themes that are still contemporary like the love for nature, the respect of the environment. For its modernity, the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden pays homage to Coleridge by writing Rime of Ancient Mariner, a song contained in the album Powerslave inspired by the poet's poem.
The poem is divided into seven parts and the plot is summed up in following lines.
The story
An old Mariner meets three guests going to a wedding. He stops them and, through his “glittering eye”, obliges them to listen to his tale.The Mariner tells them how the ship he sailed in, once it had crossed the Equator, was driven by storms towards the South Pole.
Suddenly, an albatross flies in the sky and the crew considers it as an omen of good luck.
Though, the Mariner kills the albatross without an apparent reason.
So an evil spell is cast upon the ship, which is first blown by a favourable wind towards the Equator, but suddenly it stops in a deadly calm. One day, in the fog a ghost ship appears: it is manned by Death and Life-in-Death.
They play dice with the crew’s life: Death wins the Mariner’s fellow lives, while Life-in-Death wins the Mariner’s life.
The spell begins to break, the Mariner hears a strange noise and sees some spirits, who turn into dead mariners and sail the ship at great speed.
So, the Mariner falls in trance and, meanwhile, hears two spirits, companions of the Polar Spirit that have avenged the albatross death, talking about his sin.
The ship reaches the Mariner’s native country, where a small boat driven by a hermit comes to save him. On that occasion, he confesses his story to hermit.
At the end, Mariner understands that he must wander and tell others his story, so that they learn to love God’s creatures.
Interpretations of the poem
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a ballad based on a mix of supernatural and real. The author gives us some realistic elements about the wedding, the weather at sea, the position of the sun as the ship changes hemisphere and the Mariner’s native country (the church, the lighthouse, the hill).Coleridge uses these realistic details because, on one side, he wants to create a “democratic” kind of poetry accessible to all men talking about ordinary subjects and people and, on the other side, he, realizing a ballad, (in particular Mariner’s tale) with realistic details makes its moral to the reader clear: love the God’s creatures!
The presence of the supernatural and magic may be summed up as follows:
- the figure of the old mariner, whose eye is glitter and he, through it, hypnotizes people and obliges them to listen to him. Moreover, he is compelled by a mysterious force which forces him to tell his tale to all people he meets;
- the albatross, a sacred bird, is endowed with supernatural powers;
- the presence of unearthly creatures like angels, spirits, sea monsters;
- the ship driven by mysterious forces and peopled by corpses is derived from some medieval themes: the Ship of Fools, a ghost ship that carries men nowhere, and the Dance of Death, in which Death is represented as a skeleton;
- there is no rational explanation about supernatural events.
For example, the rotting sea reflects the Mariner’s soul troubled by guilt; the sudden calm symbolizes the desolation of a sinful soul. Moreover, nature is endowed with God's anger because of the death of one of His creatures; in fact, the sun is a symbol of divine justice and the moonlight announces the refreshing coolness of forgiveness.
According to literary critics, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a disturbing psychological study of guilt, suffering and explanation. It may be read in two ways:
- religious way: killing the albatross is a sort of sin against nature and God. For this sin, the Mariner has to go through purgatorial fire; it is only after this that he may gain salvation, represented by return to his old country;
- artistic way: the Mariner is an artist who leaves his habitual world to search for truth and knowledge. He faces different troubles and misadventures and, finally, is saved by the power of imagination. Once back in the ordinary world, the artist feels compelled to tell his story to the common men, in order to make them wise. By being alone on the wide sea and sinning against a fellow creature, the albatross, he has finally learnt to love all God’s creatures.
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