Drawing with Words and Dying from Birds // Elijah Mahn

     Wordsworth is excellent at imagery. He can paint a beautiful picture with words, allowing the reader to see what he is describing. Not only that, this allows him to set the mood of the place, affecting and evoking emotions as well. This allows him to introduce characters without describing the characters themselves. Due to the place in which they live, the reader is able to imagine the person.

    The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an interesting and dark story, which seems to largely represent karma coming to get someone. However, it can be looked at from a completely different perspective. All of those who died believed the superstition, and it could be that the purpose of the story is to show the power of confirmation bias. The people believed something terrible would happen to them, and it did. The person who didn't believe the superstition was not affected by it directly, but was instead affected by what happened to those around him, which led to his isolation and mild madness.


I commented on Ian Blair and Micah Powers blog posts

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  1. Micah PowersOctober 19, 2021 at 8:32 AM

    I agree. I love Wordsworth's imagery and have the context for his imagery really helped. I really hated his arrangement I would have much rather enjoyed a short story format the line breaks we're 100% useless and distracting. Superstitions can be a problem even today and often less to comical disapproval but in his case not so much and I have sympathy upon him.---- Micah Powers

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