The Rime of the Ancient Mariner interpretations for the debate question
1. The Moral is too obvious, too didactic, too simplistic
 “In my judgment, the poem [has] too much moral, and that too openly obtruded on the reader. It ought to have no more moral than the story of the
Genii starting up and saying he must kill the merchant, because a date shell had put out the eye of the Genii’s son.”
In Table Talk, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2. It is essentially a suspenseful and gripping narrative
3. It reinforces the Romantic idea that man should learn from Nature
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“I was totally possessed by it for days - I dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the feelings of the man under the operation of such scenery dragged me along like Tom Piper’s magic whistle.”
Charles Lamb in a letter to William Wordsworth, January 1801
4. It is an allegory illustrating Coleridge’s ideas about the consequences of sin OR the consequences of not respecting Nature OR a depiction of his ideas about the
One Life OR a metaphor depicting psychological torment OR the agonies of the creative mind
 “[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner] is less a fantasticall imagination and a drowsie dreame than a continued allegory and a darke conceit*.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
*extended metaphor
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“The God of the poem, however, is a jealous God; and in context the moral tag carried the concealed threat that even the most trivial violation of his love will bring ruthless and prolonged punishment.”
Edward E Bostetter, The Nightmare World of The Ancient Mariner
5. The Albatross as connecting metaphor
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“The Albatross . . . binds separately together the three structural principles of the poem: the voyage, and the supernatural machinery, and the unfolding cycle of the deed’s results.”
Lowes, The Road to Xanadu
“The Albatross is the symbol of Coleridge’s creative imagination, his eagle.”
TS Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism