Exercise 1:

A

• During a wedding feast an old sailor, meets three young men and stops one to tell him his story.
• Because of the look of the old man, the wedding guest decides to stop and listen what the sailor has to tell him
• The sailor tells how his journey to the South pole started well
• The wedding music starts but the sailor won't let the young man go
• The story of the old man continues, his ship is hit by a storm near the  South pole
• The sailor describes the frozen lands of  the pole
• An albatros comes through the fog and is greeted by the sailors
• The albatros visits the ship for 9 days bringing good luck to the sailors
• The ancient mariner kills the bird

B)

There are two storylines in the first part of the ballad. One is set in the "present" and one is set in the past of the sailor, where he had a journey to the South Pole.

Exercise 2:

1)

The Mariner is not described in detail: Colerige uses a few sketches to give the reader an idea of the old man. The focus is on different elements: the grey beard of the sailor used to higlight his oldness, his eye the reason why the "gallant" decides to stop and listen to the mariner's story.

2

The old man looks and sounds unrealistic. Colerige wanted to give life to a characther who may be considered  a Romantic idol.

Exercise 3

1)

The journey starts with the sun going higher and higher, on a second moment the ship is caught in a storm, and the landscape changes radically. The scenery is ruled by mist and snow and the ship is surronded by ice.

2

The storm is seen first, as a strong and arrogant person, and then as a bird with enormous wings.

3)

Nature is used in a symbolic way by the poet, in a typical Romanitic atmosphere. Nature is the mirror of the sailor's feelings in that specific moment.

Exercise 4:

1

The intervention of the albatros, saiving the sailors, and leading them to safer waters, is the watershed between the symbolic and all the same realistic part of the story, and the part embodying pure symbolism.

In my opinion, the bird is metaphor for salvation and it  is killed by the ancient Mariner.