The first thing that needs to be emphasized here is that the Mariner is commonly not considered as a vampire. For centuries he has been considered more a figure of prophetic warning or the Wondering Jew. (USTE VAKVI LIKOVI One of the reasons could be his parallel with the Wandering Jew figure (explain the characteristics of the WJ from Bryan Fulmer and compare them to (some) the vampiric pointed out by Twitchell) The reason why the Mariner has escaped the treatment of a vampiric figure is the fact that the mainstream criticism has generally focused on the sin-penance-redemption theme and the specifically Christian symbolism and moral of the tale, which somehow pervade the storyline. If the Mariner is seen as a Christian soul who undergoes horrible penance after a committed sin, and comes out of it changed with some universal knowledge to impart to his listeners, then nothing evil and diabolical can be attributed to him. Why would he then be presented as a vampire? In fact, he has even suffered more than a mere act of bird-killing should ensue, as animal killing happens quite often in th
e world and does not comply to the Christian idea of sin nor determine a harsh punishment. The reasons for a different perspective was engendered when I noticed, first, some incongruities in the depiction of the Mariner as a redeemed or half-redeemed benevolent soul; second, there are some moments in the narration that cannot be explained with the traditional sacramental vision analysis (as in Warren, 958: 78); and third, the vampiric ties more tightly within the meaning of the poem in general. My reading of the Mariner is of a kind of proto-vampire figure which has been previously discussed by James Twitchell in The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature and before that in his paper The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as Vampire Poem. I am taking these as basic texts and the vampiric characteristics that Twitchell enlists, but continue constructing upon it new meaning and ideas of interpretation with the aim to unravel the reasons why Coleridges employed the vampire in a story about a violent act committed on sea travel, and what meaning the vampire imposes on the poem.