The Lack of Unity of Art and Life in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a striking example of the failure of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to attain his vision of perfect unity in a poem because the work in question leaves the reader with unanswered questions regarding its stated moral, its failure to adequately account for the reasoning behind its central action, and the poem's vacillation regarding the mariner's supposed atonement. Coleridge famously sought unity in life and art, yet in this poem he is remarkably unable to produce any semblance of unity despite telling a story that instantly grabs the attention of the reader and succeeds in keeping that attention long after the poem has been initially digested.

The idea of attaining unity within the poem is expressly made impossible by the lack of a unifying moral to adequately explain the heavy guilt and appalling events taking place on the ship as described by the ancient mariner himself. The mariner's moral for what has taken place is described to the wedding guest in this way: "He prayeth well who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast. / He prayeth best who lovest best / All things both great and small, / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all" (612-617). If this is in fact the moral which the mariner's tale is to teach us, then the first question that may come to mind is where was God's love when he was causing all the mariner's shipmates to drop dead even though it was the mariner alone who had killed the albatross? Why were the shipmates chosen to drop dead instead of the one who had actually killed the bird he should rather have loved? Where is the sense in that morality? Rather than answering questions, it raises questions about what kind of God is the mariner talking about.