ade the breeze to blow." Whalley also notes that the bird is often in literature associated with imagination or inspiration. John Livingston Lowes has spoken of the function of theAlbatross as a unifying agent in the poem, binding together the voyage, the supernatural happenings, and the process of punishment that the Mariner must undergo; these, he says, are the principal structural elements in the work (Lowes 151-3). G. W. Knight stresses that the Albatross is greeted as "a Christian soul," and that the bird can suggest a force of redemption in creation such as Christ is confessed to be. The Albatross like Christ could be interpreted as leading man from his primitive origins to moral and spiritual improvement. The fact that the Albatross is hung around theMariner's neck (rather than a cross) may suggest the death of Christ (Lowes preface). Robert Penn Warren directs attention to the way the killing of the Albatross in the poem is the compromising of the sacred values of hospitality; the Mariner "inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen." The killing of the Albatross becomes then symbolically a murder, for the bird loved the man who killed it. Because the crime has no motive, it has, Warren decides, symbolic connections with the original Fall of man. He points out a cluster of associations with the wind (creative force), the Albatross (friend and companion), and Mariner (imagination) (Lowes 152). Apparently in this view, the killing of the Albatross has gravity far beyond cruelty to animals - it is Original Sin.Somewhat similarly, W. H. Auden relates the Albatross to the symbol of the Holy Ghost in Christian theology, the Dove, and then through the whiteness of the Dove to the White Lamb, Christ. Humphry House says that the prose gloss when added to the appearance, the character, and the power of the bird in the poem makes the killing of the Albatross as great as the murder of a human being. He calls attention to all...
