The Mariner As A Muse For Fre

The Mariner As A Muse (For Fre Essay, Research Paper THE MARINER AS A MUSE (FOR FREUD) Through this complex poem it is no easy task to contrive one concise explanation that will sum up the poem. The Rhyme Of the Ancient Mariner has strong undertones of God the creator, the animals in his kingdom, and the basic emotional circumstances that make up human existence. While these are broad topics, they can be broken down into cause and effect situations using some of Freud’s methodology in Ego Psychology. Freud explained the way the human mind uses defense mechanisms, and there are some examples of these mechanisms in “The Rhyme Of the Ancient Mariner.” Freud’s ideas on displacement, rationalization, and projection can be used to understand some of the actions seen in the

poem. The poem starts out in the present day when the Mariner, uninvited, attends a wedding reception where he takes aside one of the guests and begins to spin his tale of a see adventure which appears to be part fact, hallucination, and religion. The mariner and his fellow seamen are stranded in the middle of the ocean with no wind. There boat has not moved in weeks, the ocean is calm and they are at natures (Gods) mercy. When suddenly out of the blue comes a glorious albatross. In an almost magical way the sails flood with wind and the sea changes from a calm portrait of water into a lively swell of waves and white caps. Almost all the crew begins to rejoice in the albatross and the whether which they believe it brought. Only the Ancient Mariner is anything but happy over the

bird’s presence and he shoots the bird with a harpoon, killing it. The reason the Mariner killed the bird is not emphasized but a mask of a reason is that he thought the bird was responsible for the bad whether. The other sailors turn on the Mariner blaming him for the return of the bad whether by shooting the albatross. They hang the carcass of the Albatross around his neck as a reminder of his crime and are plagued with another calm of the whether. As time goes on most of the crew on the ship die and the mariner begins to hallucinate due to his dehydration and his miserable state. Soon the Mariner is the only one left on the ship and he begins to fear that all hope is lost. As the Mariner begins to contemplate his situation he turns to God and blesses all the creatures in the

world including his dead comrades, the ugly hallucinations he has, and the albatross. After he makes his peace with God the albatross falls from his neck, the skeletons of his crewmembers return to life, and the wind pushes his sails homeward. There is a heavy presence of the supernatural in this story but after analyzing the psyche of the Ancient Mariner and the crew, we can see hidden motivations behind the actions. Freud’s theory of displacement can be used to explain the actions of the crew and their treatment of the Mariner. Displacement is a tool that lets people redirect their anger when the cause of their anger cannot be directly accessed. If a person has a conflict inside them where they are unable to reach a resolution because the resolution is unobtainable, they need

to find an outlet. If they let the problem continue to build inside they will not be able to find an outlet and never have a release. By taking that aggression and placing it on another outlet they can resolve their aggression without ever truly dealing with the problem. (Freud and beyond 9) The method the crewmen use to punish the Mariner is really an indirect way of dealing with the whether. They have no control over the course of the whether and cannot seek vengeance on it for letting their ship lay motionless. When the Albatross comes and the whether begins to turn they immediately associated the turning of the whether with the albatross. As rational people we know that the presence of a bird cannot be accountable for the direction of the winds. But these men are desperate