An Ecocritical Study of S.T. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Ecocritical study seeks to warn us of environmental threats emanating from governmental, industrial, commercial and neo-colonial forces. Since the ages these threats remained in the focus of literature because it is the literature which teaches the man how to live on earth. It also develops a bond between the man and the nature. The man and the nature both survive together and if this bond is broken by the man it becomes punishable, the nature punishes the man time to time for criminal acts. The ecocritical study of the poem “The Rime of Ancient Mariner” presents such a bond between man and the nature. In the poem this bond is broken by the ancient mariner by killing the huge bird Albatross which used to visit his ship regularly on his voyage. The killing of the bird without no reason invites the natural disaster to men on voyage. The poem published in 1798 in the first edition of ‘Lyrical Balad’ but the study of it becomes more pertinent now a days when entire humanity is suffering from the world-wide pandemic Covid-19. The purpose of this paper is to attract the attention of the readers world-wide to maintain the bond between the man and the nature because the man has violated that bond which was made not to broken at any cost but the violation of that bond is inviting the natural disasters in different forms which are becoming dangerous to the existence of the man on earth.