"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a poem about a young man who is part of a wedding party, who stops and listens to a mariner who tells him his life story. At first, the partygoer is intrigued by the mariners' glittering eye and stops to listen to his tale. The Mariners tale begins with his ship stuck in a maze of ice. The mariner and his crew come across an albatross, a great seabird. The mariner kills the albatross, and the sailors began experiencing trouble at sea soon after. They run into a ghost ship and all sailors are killed except the mariner. Before they die, they all curse him. As he floats alone at sea, the mariner realizes that all these bad things are happening to him because he killed the albatross. As he realizes his mistake, and gains respect for all of God's creatures, his curse is lifted. Spirits inhabit the dead bodies of the soldiers and help propel the Mariners ship back to shore. To help absolve the sin of killing the albatross, the mariner must now confess his story to the people that he first meets when entering a new town. The partygoer now realizes that this is why the mariner is telling him this story. As the church doors open the wedding guests come out, the partygoer goes home,and awakes the next morning "a sadder and wiser man".
I think that this story has a distinct moral Christian message. All of God's creatures are to be respected and revered, no matter how big, small, pretty, or hideous. The mariner seems to be a religious person with a conscience, and realizes that killing the albatross was a bad idea when he says "and I had done a hellish thing". He even takes the Lords name in vain when he sees slimy things with legs crawl out of the sea. When all of his fellow sailors died he "looked to heaven and tried to pray". A spirit told the mariner "the man hath penance done, and penance more will do". Penance is a type of reconciliation done with God only in the Christian religion. The idea that the mariner cannot be forgiven...