Abstract
This paper focuses on the psychic apparatus of Persona in Coleridge’s The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner which Jung calls “only a mask of the collective psyche.”
The Mariner’s journey in the familiar social surrounding, the “kirk” and the
“light-house”, are images which symbolize ordinary social set up. Initially, the
journey is a plain sailing as the Mariner and his peers are unconsciously
conscious of a set of values that are ordinarily taken for granted. In the land of
the “mist and snow” (symbolic of the unconscious), however, they come face to
face with a situation that defies the normal parameters of their habitual social
character. A temporary social acceptance (the Mariner’s surrender to the
alternative judgments of his peers) is bargained at a very high price. The modern
man’s claustrophobic isolation and with it the loss of identity are dilemmas
resulting from one-sided consciousness. Man’s vital faculties (like those of the
Mariner) suffer deathblows when they are wilfully strangulated in unnatural
pursuits of meaningless recognitions. Our examination of the Mariner’s traumatic
woes will yield extensive correspondences with contemporary social and
civilizational debacles.
Syed Zahid Ali Shah, Nasir Jamal Khattak. (2014) The Shamming Self: The Mariner’s Persona in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, Volume-22, Issue-1.
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