On Reading Aloud

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, written in the 19th century by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, can be read at many levels. Either as a surreal story of an adventure at sea, or as a sort of biblical tale of sin and atonement, or even as a cautionary tale of man versus nature – these could be three ways in which this ballad could be interpreted. A group of 16 students of class 10 from Taurian World School (and I) set off to explore the poem through the first prism- as a tale of surreal adventure. The idea was to give…