The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a salvation story. The poem's structure is multi-layered text based on Coleridge's interest in Higher Criticism. "Like the Iliad or Paradise Lost or any great historical product, the "Rime" is a work of transhistorical rather than so-called universal significance. This verbal distinction is important because it calls attention to a real one. Like The Divine Comedy or any other poem, the "Rime" is not valued or used always or everywhere or by everyone in the same way or for the same reasons." George Whalley, in his 1946–47 essay, "The Mariner and the Albatross", suggests that the Ancient Mariner is an
A Descent into the Maelström the narrator will believe it. The story's opening bears a similarity to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798): in both, an excited old man tells his story of shipwreck and survival. The tale is one of sensation, emphasizing the narrator's thoughts and feelings, especially his terror of being killed in the whirlpool. The narrator uses his reasoning skills to survive and the story is considered one of Poe's early examples of science fiction. The story mentions Jonas Danilssønn Ramus, a man from Norway who wrote about a famous maelström at Saltstraumen. The opening epigraph is quoted