The Rime of the Ancient MarinerHuman beings naturally have a strong feeling about their personal religion, their imagination, and their individualism. Today the freedom to think and speak for oneself is a common concept. In Europe, at the end of the 18th century, freedom of thought was not so easy for people. Artists express feelings and emotions through their art and for Samuel Taylor Coleridge his poems illustrate what some people of his time were afraid to say. During the Romantic era, when imagination and nature were emphasized, Samuel Coleridge used his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to reflect his religiously based ideas through symbols and poetry. The importance of religion during the Romantic period was enormous. People of this period often turned to religion when faced with inexplicable events. In an academic journal reviewing Coleridge's poetry, Christopher Stokes states, "(The poem) focuses on the irrational moral order presented in the poem and its foundation in the Christian doctrine of original sin" (Stokes 1). Coleridge's work is essentially a great prayer in which the sailor learns through the experience of his voyage. At the beginning of the third part the sailor could not speak because he was so thirsty. The inability to speak stems from the punishment the sailor received for his actions or, from the Christian perspective, sins. In addition to speaking, the sailor was also cursed with the loss of the ability to pray. The sailor had to deal with the lack of water in the poem. The sailor was forced to find a way out of the drought when he said: "With throats unquenched, with lips blackened, / We could neither laugh nor complain; / In total drought we remained silent! / I bit my arm , sucked the blood, / And cried: A sail! (Co...... center of article ...... Cited Al-Rashid, Amer HM "Between Flux And Fixity: Negotiations Of Space In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner." Intercultural Communication 7.3 ( 2011): 59-71. Premier Academic Research. 21 April 2014. Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Matthias. “Unspeakable Discovery: Romanticism and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” 24.2 (2013): 185-210 Web April 21. Theory of Life." Journal Of The History Of Biology 32.1 (1999): 31-50. MEDLINE. Web. April 21, 2014. Stokes, Christopher. "My Soul in Agony ": Irrationality and Christianity in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Studies In Romanticism 50.1 (2011): 3-28. Academic Search Premier. 2014.