Explanation of Guilt, Morality, and Death in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner from the Perspective of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

The poem Rime of Ancient Mariner, written by an English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Written this poem in the collaborative collection called lyrical ballad, which is being co-written with William Wordsworth both of them are the core figures of Romantic Movement. This poem talks about a person who kills an albatross which represents Christian soul and then the man (mariner) being punished by God for killing it. And this leads towards destruction of all the other crew mates as well as the mariner. The core elements of this paper are the psychoanalysis of morality, guilt and death drive in the light of Sigmund Freud’s theories. This is the qualitative research where we do not use numerical as a primary source of analysis, instead we take text. This study shows that morality is the way where people learn how to live in a way where human does not harm each other which mariner learns by his punishments after killing albatross and facing guilt by his crewmates. Mariner sees death in front of his eyes for so long that he somehow get familiar with it, his death instincts befriends with him and he changes it into something neutral and positive at the end of this poem.