The Rime of The Ancient Mariner in Popular Culture - Literature

Literature

• In Brian Keene's novel The Conqueror Worms, the character Salty mentions that it is bad luck to kill an albatross. The narrator, Teddy, also speaks of how "The Ancient Mariner was sent an albatross...Noah was sent a dove", while he himself was sent a crow.
• In Anne Rice's novel Interview With The Vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac quoted these lines when referring to Claudia: "Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold".
• In James M. Cain's crime novel Double Indemnity, Phyllis is described as the creature who came on board ship to shoot dice in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• The poem features prominently in the plot of Douglas Adams's novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
• Throughout William S. Burroughs' most famous novel Naked Lunch, he references Coledridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Sea Mariner paralleling the narrator of Naked Lunch (himself) to the wandering, cursed, judged, and ultimately doomed narrator of Coleridge’s epic poem “Gentle reader, I fain would spare you this, but my pen hath its will like the Ancient Mariner,”. Burroughs may have identified with the tale as it parallels his own tragic story in which he is believed to have accidentally shot his wife dead and then left the U.S. to travel the world while sustaining his drug habit.
• Gene Wolfe's science fiction novella, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, uses as its motto the lines: "When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, / And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, / That eats the she-wolf's young".
• In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, chapter Five, Victor Frankenstein quotes the lines: "Like one, that on a lonesome road / Doth walk in fear and dread / And, having once turned round, walks on / And turns no more his head / Because he knows a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread" (Penguin Popular Classic 1968 page 57, cited from Rime, 1817 edition). In the book's opening letters from Robert Walton to his sister, specifically Letter II, Walton explicitly mentions the poem by name and claims he "shall kill no albatross" on his journey.
• In Clive Cussler's novel Iceberg, several references are made to the poem and it is quoted several times. The villain's company logo is the albatross. In another novel The Silent Sea, four lines from the poem are written on the page before the prologue.
• In Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, the Mariner is an ancient and powerful being. He claims his real name is Captain Tom Shelvocke, and he mentions accidentally shooting an albatross.
• In Lights Out by Peter Abrahams, the protagonist Eddie Nye has memorized the poem during his 15 years in prison. He ponders many aspects of the poem as his own story unfolds. The plot of the novel reflects several aspects of the poem.
• The poem is heavily referred to in the Connie Willis science fiction novel, Passage.
• The Ancient Mariner plays a crucial role in W.W. Denslow's 1904 children's book, The Pearl and the Pumpkin.
• The author Garry Kilworth, famous for the Welkin Weasels trilogy, was inspired by Coleridge for the entire trilogy. For example, when Sherriff Falshed is on the run from a dragonfly nymph, he quotes "A frightful fiend, did close behind him swish," and also in the third book the entire scene with Death is re-enacted with a walrus and a nebulous shadow, when the weasels pass their ghostly vessel.
• In his poem "Snake", D.H. Lawrence compares the albatross in Ancient Mariner to the poem's subject, a snake
• Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen includes a story within a story "Tales of the Black Freighter", which bears similarities to the poem through its supernatural themes and the tale of a mariner's impending doom.
• Charles Baudelaire (who also translated E.A. Poe into French) revisits the scene with the albatross (see Dürer's illustration above), suggesting the poet is the albatross rather than the mariner. ("The Albatross", 1857, Flowers of Evil).
• In Michael Morpurgo's novel Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is featured heavily and key ideas from the poem are used in the novel.