by 
Anonymous
ANSWERS: 1
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The narrator is the Ancient Mariner himself. His *curse* or punishment for shooting the albatross is that he somehow knows when he sees a person who has to hear his story, and he HAS to tell it. He has this hypnotic gaze ("his glittering eye") that forces the listener to stay and hear the whole story, no matter what else he or she might need to be doing. In this case, the Mariner tells his story to a wedding guest (who misses the wedding in the process). The thing about the Mariner is that he's an incredibly powerful storyteller; he can force his potential listener to hear him out, and *the story changes the listener*: "A sadder and a wiser man / He woke the morrow morn."
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