The Dice Game

       On one of the many nights the mariner spends stranded at sea with his dying crew, he sees another ship. Everyone on the mariner's ship is excited, but as the other ship draws closer the mariner notices that the other ship is nothing but a wrecked one. On the ruined ship the mariner spies two people, oddly playing a game of dice. He realises the man on the ship is Death and his mate "the nightmare Life-in-Death". He watches the two play when the woman jumps up and yells "The game is done! I've won! I've won!" the mariner is soon to face a fate worse than death.
       In the picture above is a depiction of Death and the woman, who is reffered to as Life-in-Death, playing  the dice game the mariner witnesses. This picture is important because I think this part in the poem is a very important part. Following the dice game, there is no rescue for the mariner and his crew, infact all of the crew dies except the mariner. The mariner says he saw their souls fly past him, while he stayed stranded on the ship. Its strange that the mariner would be the only man on board to survive when he was in just as bad of shape as the other crew members who parished. As the mariner wonders the ship and wishes for death he notices that all the dead crew's eyes are fixed on him, he belives they are cursing him.
       This is when the dice game starts to make sense, the mariner is cursed to spend his life in death. He must stay with his dead crew, and this only gets weirder because the crew comes back to life and they run the ship once more, only before dropping into a final death. Why should the mariner be cursed? I belive that the poem is about how when the mariner lost his faith in God, God gave up on him and left him for death and his mate.

By Kerri Peetz