“From what I can gather it seems that the Ancient Mariner has upon the whole been an injury to

the volume. The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has
no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been
long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of
something supernatural."
This is an excerpt from Wordsworth’s letter to Joseph Cottle in 1799 in which he condemns the
lack of distinction in the Ancient Mariner. Wordsworth’s criticism though well-grounded , can
be countered : lack of indeterminacy is in nature of a supernatural work of art and Coleridge’s
poem is not an excepption. we can not find definite explanation for what surpasses human
reasoning. modern generation of critics had felt the temptation to engage in the unknown and
make it meaning full for themselves.
Peter Kitson is ,a well-known scholar and the author of numerous books and articles on the
Romantics, discusses the relevance of the French Revolution to the poem:

“S. T. Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was

written against the background of the collapse of the poet’s
hopes for the improvement of mankind by political action,
the ultimate failure of the French Revolution to distinguish
itself from its oppressive predecessors.” Peter Kitson,
“Coleridge, the French Revolution, and ‘The Ancient
Mariner’

Rookmaaker designated a whole chapter of his book, Towards a Romantic Conception of

Nature (1959) to interpreting Coleridge’s ‘The Ancient Mariner’. “Rookmaaker denounces a
moral interpretation of the poem and instead focuses on what he believes to be the main concern
of the poem: Coleridge’s preoccupation with man’s relation to nature, with the difficulties
inherent in his notion of nature’s life-giving activity and man’s passive receptivity.

The above critical interpretations are only the small portion of critical studies which has been
carried out on Coleridge’s poetry. Most of the critical analysis on coleridge’s poem are thematic,
in nature .but the contribution of Coleridge to Reader-response theory has never been fully
appreciated. The rime of ancient mariner dramatizes the reader-response theory that “a poem has
no real existence until it is read; it’s meaning can only be discussed by its readers.”(Selden,45)
A full grasp of Coleridge’s poem,the rime of ancient mariner, depends heavily on the ability
of its reader “ to complete what is incomplete.” In fact exponent of reader-response theory view
the text as a puzzle which only its key pieces are provided and It is due to the reader to complete
the puzzle by his/ her own imagination. Wolfgang Iser, a chief exponent of German reception
theory has introduced and elaborated the “puzzle” conception via two key words: determinate
and indeterminate meaning.Determinate meaning refers to what might be called the facts of the
text, certain events in the plot or physical descriptions clearly provided by the words on the page.
In contrast,indeterminate meaning, or indeterminacy, refers to “gaps” in the text—such as
actions that are not clearly explained or that seem to have multiple explanations—which allow or
even invite readers to create their own interpretations. He suggests that we might think of the
literary work as having two poles: the “artistic” pole is the text created by the author, and the
“aesthetic” pole refers to “the realization accomplished by the reader” (IR, 274). We cannot
identify the literary work with either the text or the realization of the text; it must lie “half-way
between the two,” and in fact it comes into being only through the convergence of text and
reader (IR, 275.)
Ancient Mariner has an abrupt opening. We are taken without delay to the principal person and
his tale: “it is an ancient mariner/and he stoppeth one of the three” wedding guests to whom he
relates his story. The identity of either ancient mariner or his listener is left inexplicit. except for
his ordeal,We are told nothing from the background of this Mariner. We don’t know what even
his real name is.what makes him to tell his story to a complete stranger? What sort of power his
“glittering eyes” possess that transfixes the Wedding guest so that he can do nothing but sit on a
stone and listen to Mariner’s tale.
But these are trivial point compare to indefinite nature of his sea voyage which turns to painful
ordeal.
The Mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the
ship is driven south off course by a storm which drives them into an icy world that is called "the
land of mist and snow" which thwarted them from seeing either “shapes of men or beast”. This
land of mist and snow which mariner recurrently refers to in the course of narrative gives an air
of ambuguity & vaguness to the poem. In fact ,It is neither the coldness & desolation of the
“land of mist and snow” which makes the crew terrified but the undefinability of what it has
within.
But the panic is over when albatross appears and leads them out . Initially the bird is praised as a
good omen, “Christian soul” whose appearance rescues them adrift in South Pole. So the closing
stanza of part 1, in which Mariner reveals to his listener that he has murdered the bird ,comes as
a shock to the reader. So he is eager to know the cause of such ingratitude and its outcome. But
Mariner seems to be in such a hurry to move on to the heart of his adventure that makes no
remarks regarding his motivation for killing the albatross. He resumed his narration from sailing
onwards while “ a good south wind still blew behind.”
The lack of accuracy on the part of narrator prompts the reader to interpret Mariner’s motives
through the lens of his own projection:

We can surmise that Mariner desired to bring the beauty of the spiritual world (embodied
in the Albatross) down to the temporal world in order to understand it. He takes the bird
out of the air and onto the deck, where it proves to be mortal indeed.

Inquiry after the Mariner’s motive and his sense of guilt has been the most baffling
feature of The Ancient Mariner and Since Coleridge refrained from making a firm
judgment about his character , the poem and its central character has been subject to
various critical comments:

Robert Penn Warren, in support of his Christian view of the poem saw the motiveless crime of
the Mariner as symbolic of the Fall, and congruent with Coleridge's adherence to the doctrine of
original Sin:
The will of man is fundamentally corrupt, and in the
Mariner's act we watch this corruption. "The lack of
 motivation, the perversity. . .is exactly the significant
thing about the Mariner's act" (Warren).

David Miall in his essay, Guilt and death : the predicament of Ancient Mariner, pointed out to
the lack of proportion between the sin and punishment: “In itself the act seems relatively trivial
in comparison with the dire consequences that ensue; it cannot, as an act, bear the moral weight
that is put upon it.”(Miall)
Whether we accept these critics’ opinion or form one of our own, our attitude toward mariner
cannot go steady through the course of poem. It is meant, by the text, to move from reproach or a
shade of it to compassion toward a man who is condemned to indefinite amount of agony.

After all no remark has been made by the narrator or no sign has been given that suggest an
ending for Mariner’s agony.

The expectation of some forms of retribution had already been formed in the reader,Once the
mariner kills the Albatross . But the assumption that it will be followed by some sort of
forgiveness is to be challenged by the ensuing events.The spiritual world begins to punish the
Ancient Mariner and the other sailors by making all elements of the temporal world painful: the
south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted
waters, where it is becalmed:

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink

Ironically , the whole crew’s deliverance comes through death. The ship encounters a
ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a
deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the
dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the Mariner,
a prize she considers more valuable. The Ancient Mariner is cursed to continually feel
the agonizing compulsion to tell his tale to others. His fellow sailors whose souls go to
hell seem freer than the Ancient Mariner. He is denied the satisfaction of being able to
die. . While their souls fly unencumbered out of their bodies, he is destined to be trapped
in his indefinitely - a living hell.

Lack of determinacy on the part of the author regarding the fate of the Ancient Mariner, -
what in traditional term is known as the open ending-leaves the reader on his own device
to conclude the tale.

Next to all the tribute paid to Coleridge’s masterpiece, one cannot overlook the fact that
poem proves quiet challenging to its reader. It demands the incorporation of the reader
with the text to plumb the depth of meaning.