![]() ![]() Unlike Coleridge's version, the office-worker doesn't listen to the mariner, taking him for a madman, and so our indifferent villain hurries back into "a world detached of consequence". While it's an enormous challenge, not to mention a brave move, to rework a classic, Hayes's entirely original verse and rich illustrations mean that it more than stands up as a work in its own right. ![]() It's the moment where he falls in love with the slop of salp on the top of the plastic bottles, that's the moment the albatross drops because that's when he feels empathy for another creature." "He sees the massive scale of nature and the puny scale of man, and realises where we are in the hierarchy of things and feels less at the top of the scale. ![]() The albatross doesn't drop from the mariner's neck until he comes to an understanding and appreciation of the natural world. Hayes modernises Coleridge's wedding guest, whom the mariner confronts to tell his tale, into a divorced office-worker having lunch in a park (who, sure enough, thoughtlessly discards his plastic sandwich box on the floor during the tale). The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel that updates the familiar tale of Coleridge's poem, which sees a weary mariner forced to roam the earth telling all who will listen about the dastardly events that occur after he foolishly kills an albatross while out at sea. First published in 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's masterpiece, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with its complex narrative and supernatural overtones, the account of sin and restoration, may at first seem an unlikely piece of literature to rework into a cautionary tale about how we treat our planet today, but Nick Hayes, an author and illustrator, has done just that. ![]()
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