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In spite of the extensive critical attention given to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” since the appearance of The Road to Xanadu in 1927, the father-son theme has never been discussed. Archetypal and psychological critics have emphasized the maternal theme, seen primarily in Life-in-Death and Mary Queen, but sometimes extended to include the ship, the sea, the moon, the albatross, and the water-snakes.1 Other critics have stressed different aspects of the poem: the influence of Hartleyan psychological theories, the sacramental vision and the theme of the imagination, the personal allegory, the myth of guilt and redemption, the philosophical and mythological sources, and the nightmarish world of the Mariner.2 Yet the father-son theme is central to the meaning the Mariner finds in his experience and is the point at which the frame and the narrative converge (“O sweeter than the marriage feast…. To walk together to the kirk,/And all together pray,/While each to his great Father bends….”). It is an essential part of the basic fantasy on which the religious theme is built and the psychological key to the controversial moral stanzas at the end of the poem. The Mariner never confronts silent Death, the Terrible Father (to borrow a Jungian term), or God, “his great Father.” Put briefly, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is built on an Oedipal fantasy concerned with the father-son relationship (as is for example “Henry IV”), but at a supernatural and religious level. The Ancient Mariner is a prodigal son who seeks to reconcile himself with his Father. Reconciliation is the purpose of the bended knee, the implicit renunciation of aggression, and the love of “Both man and bird and beast”—submissive love and reverence will purge the Mariner's deep sense of guilt and prepare him to face Death and