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Albatross (metaphor)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tesler (talk | contribs) at 17:59, 29 January 2011 (The purported definition did not square with the current one in the cited dictionary. And one word, "egostatic", is not even in that dictionary. Instead, I defined it myself.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The word 'albatross' is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).

In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship — being followed by an albatross was generally considered an omen of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (which indeed suffers terrible mishaps). To punish him, his companions induce him to wear the dead albatross around his neck indefinitely (until they all die from the curse, as it happens). Thus the albatross can be both an omen of good or bad luck, as well as a metaphor for a burden to be carried (as penance).

The symbolism used in the Coleridge poem is its highlight. For example:

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

This sense is catalogued in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1936 and 1955, but it seems only to have entered general usage in the 1960s, so to speak. For many reasons undisclosed, it may have been in general usage as early as 1959.

Also, the word albatross is used in Letter II, Volume One of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which Robert Walton is speaking to his sister and states, "…but I shall kill no albatross…", an allusion quite clearly referring to the poem by her close acquaintance, Coleridge. The novel was first published in 1818, long before the term was introduced into the Oxford Dictionary.

Charles Baudelaire's collection of poems Les Fleurs du mal contains a poem entitled L'Albatros about men on ships who catch the albatrosses for sport. In the final stanza, he goes on to compare the poets to the birds— exiled from the skies and then weighed down by their giant wings, till death.

Television

  • The Monty Python team, exploiting absurdist associations of ideas, gave life to the image of having an albatross around one's neck. In their sketch "Albatross", set in a cinema, an irritated man (John Cleese) dressed as an ice-cream girl tries to sell a dead albatross, the only item he has on his ice-cream tray.
  • In the HBO series Deadwood, a character refers to the debt owed to blacks because of slavery as an "albatross around the white man's neck." Episode 304.
  • In The New Adventures of Flipper episode 417 "Mystery Ship," an abandoned boat, a yawl, is discovered with no one aboard. She is named The Albatross. She isn't registered and doesn't appear in any data bases. She appears to be sea worthy but strange accidents occur. Eventually the couple who salvaged her argue over whether to keep her or not. Upon further search of the boat a boat builder's plaque is found. The Albatross was built by a boat builder who went out of business in the late 1930s. This discovery leads to a news paper article about a murder aboard the boat, the Sweet Charlotte. Apparently over time anyone coming in contact with her has bad luck. She has gone from being named the Sweet Charlotte to The Albatross.
  • In the TNT series Memphis Beat, a character refers to family as "an albatross around the neck of a great man." Episode 107.

Film

  • Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of Serenity (in the movie Serenity) defends the notion that River Tam is an albatross to the crew and later to the Operative. He says that the Albatross was good luck until "some idiot killed it". When Malcolm is speaking, he then adds to Inara, "Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint." in a reference to the Coleridge poem. At the end of the film, he calls River "Little Albatross."
  • 'Mac' MacClaren's sturdy little wooden cutter, which weathers a hurricane in the John Cusack / Wendy Gazelle movie Hot Pursuit, is named Albatross.

Music

References

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