The Ballad of the Sailor and His Journey of Moral Redemption

The Meeting with the Sailor

In this ballad the ancient mariner stops a wedding guest in order to tell him his story, the latter tries to resist, but the seaman's eyes are hypnotising and he can't but listen. The old man says that on a clear day he set out on a ship full of a happy crew. They reached the equator and terrible storm forced them southwards. They stopped in the middle of green ice in the south pole, and the sailors are the only living beings in that frightening world where the ice made terrible sounds. Finally they see an albatross, but all of a sudden the wind started blowing and they left the polar region. The wedding guest notices that the mariner has a grave look and he asks why, so he tells him he shot the albatross.

Repentance and Redemption

As he killed the albatross, he didn't feel guilty, he was careless and superficial, then he started repenting and regretting what he had done. He redeemed himself telling his story and giving a warn to whom the talked to. There is a moral growth from carelessness to sensitivity, which never appears in traditional ballads. This ballad has many characteristics of the old ballad form, such as: it tells a dramatic story in verse, it is written in quatrains, it is full of repetition, it deals with crime and supernatural events, it is written in archaic language and it is a mixture of dialogue and narration. It differs from the other ballads because this one provides a moral aim and a the reader can notice a moral growth in the principal character.