Reading this book was very confusing from my perspective, many unlucky things happen to the Ancient Mariner because of the sin he committed. 5 main characters are: The Ancient Mariner (the boat), the Wedding guest, a character attending a wedding celebration who is stopped by the Ancient Mariner and compelled to listen to his story. The pilot is the person that is steering the ship around. Shipmates are the people that work on the ship. Hermit, one of the people who save the Ancient Mariner, plus frees the Ancient Mariner of its guilt. The story starts off with the boat being stuck in the Arctic, then in the doldrums where there is no wind. The worst thing happens to the ship when he shoots the Albatross (seagull) with his crossbow, this means he has sinned. He is forced to wear the dead Albatross around his neck as a symbol of guilt. They see another ship in the distance with death and a woman, they play a game with the die, the woman ends up winning, so all the shipmates die. Just because of the Ancient Mariner committed that sin. My argument is that killing an Albatross with a bow is not a sin because he needs to have food to survive. I kill spiders, but I would not consider that a sin, also meaning that killing a seagull is not one either. The Ancient Mariner could have done a million things much worse than that. That was nothing, back then I bet you there were a bunch of Albatrosses.
Reading the 5 stanzas was stressful, but helpful. I am very good at memorizing, the 5 stanzas are talking about what happened when there was wind, they were moving at a good pace. However, when there was no wind and the sails dropped, they were pretty much stuck, it was sad for them. My favourite stanza was the fourth one: “Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean”. This was my favourite for many reasons, its telling us what it would be like on a ship without any wind, this for me was also the harderst part to memorize for some reason. During the oral presentation I did a fantastic job for the first 3 stanzas using good memorization, volume and speed, but as I got to the last 2 stanzas I got a little ahead of myself, thats when I needed a little help from Mr. Mackight, in the end I did finish, I will be honest I did make some mistakes. Overall, it was a good experience and I think I did the best I could with the circumstances. The whole book was pretty good too, exploring themes of guilt, redemption, forgiveness, the natural world and the consequences of human actions.