In the throw of the dice on board the spectre ship we are confronted with a species of hysteron proteron in which cause seems to follow effect, since in the sequence of the poem the effective symbol of the Mariner's state, the figure of Life-in-Death, appears before the state itself is fully manifested. But this arrangement possesses a kind of dream logic that fulfills two functions: first, it prepares the reader for the deeper significance of the scenes that are to follow (and I examine the figure of Life-in-Death more fully in another place, to suggest where that significance lies); second, it provides a bridge between the preliminary scene of becalming, into which the specter ship bursts, and the more deadly one to come, rather as the dream work, as Freud described it, tends to unify and suggest connections between different parts of its material (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams). But it is the death of his shipmates, not the encounter with Life-in-Death, which proves traumatic for the Mariner.

As the sailors die one after another, "Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, / And cursed me with his eye" (214-5). The Mariner is left alone, unable to pray, or even, it would seem, to move. But the worst aspect of his condition is the sight of the dead men about him.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die. (257-62)

The Mariner is subject, in Robert Lifton's words, to "what may be called the survivor's 'death spell,' his thraldom to the death encounter itself" (Lifton, 508). Lifton's study of the victims of Hiroshima who survived exposure to the atom bomb (the significance of the title of his study, Death In Life, is inescapable for readers of Coleridge) describes traumatic experiences which in all essential details parallel Coleridge's account of the Mariner.