Simply put, it was a country that formed individualistic ideals from a controversial religious and political past - one with boundless opportunities. ... Some have even said sin was institutionalized as its impact was softened by its very exposure. ... Slavery has been simplified to a part of our gruesome past that everyone - including African-Americans - wants to forget. ...
In stanza 105-106, there's a hair-raising wind that blows past the mariner "Like a meadow-gale of spring" The romantic element of this poem is especially strong when the mariner uses the simile of a painting to describe the stillness in the ocean: "As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.... This image of a winged predator that chases the ship directs our attention to the notion of the sin not only being the killing of the albatross, but the entire purpose of the voyage itself. ... In other words, Coleridge is saying that enslaving people is an immoral and unnatural...
The resource that enabled slaves to maintain such defiance was their culture: the body of beliefs and values born of their past and their present. ... Since storytellers or griots focus mainly on the history of their people ancestors are usually the principal subjects of a particular chronicle of the past (Stuckey, 14). ...
