Neither the Mariner nor the Prisoner, however, have any ways of escape from their confinements - the former is held in captivity by the sea and the other elements which are under the power of the avenging Spirit, and the latter is imprisoned and guarded in the castle built on an isolated rock by Lake Geneva. ...
It is the outbreak itself, the "spirit that plagued" them with suffocating symptoms: tongues "withered at the root" and "choked with soot," "throats unslaked, with black lips baked," "glazed" eyes reflecting the "bloody sun" and "death-fires" of the stagnant waters (2.132; 2.136; 3.157; 3:146; 2.112; 2.128)" (Lee). ... Lastly, when it comes to holy punishment and slave allegories, on stanza 95, the ocean is described "as a slave before his lord," the moon. ...
The juxtaposition between short, weak adjectives, 'tired, old and grey' and rich expressions such as 'radiantly beautiful' and 'exquisitely voluptuous' emphasise his vulnerability to temptation, a veiled allusion to when Jesus was tempted at his weakest, 'Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil'11. ...
