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Analysis Of Percy Bysshe Shelly's Ozymandias

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Ozymandias is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelly also Ozymandias is an Egyptian King. Ozymandias’ real name is King Ramesses II; he is known as Ozymandias by the Greeks. Percy Bysshe Shelly hears about a finding of Ozymandias’ statue near his funeral temple and this basically motivates him to write this poem. The statue is completely demolished leaving only a few pieces from the statue on the ground and there is no other form of life near it, everything around the statue is deserted. Percy Bysshe Shelly basically describes what is at and around the statue in the poem Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelly is born on August fourth in 1792, near Horsham Sussex, England. He is a romantic poet and is very passionate about searching for personal love …show more content…

King Ramesses II rules for sixty-seven years and passes away around the age of ninety. There is no monument that shows how King Ramesses II actually looks like. There are statues of him but, this does not verify how he actually looks like. This is because the Egyptian artists are not intending to portray “the king in a totally realistic manner,” rather the statues were based on models (Dunn). From the statues it is seen that King Ramesses II is what a king is supposed to look like. He is tall, physically strong, young, dignified, and handsome. His facial features consist of arched eyebrows, almond shaped eyes, square chin, high cheek bones, and he always has a regal smile. Throughout his reign he is known to have the most amount of kids out of all the other rulers. People estimate that Ozymandias has “fifty sons and fifty daughters” which puts him at around one hundred kids all together (Dunn). This number though is very controversial because others think Ozymandias has around two hundred kids. He obviously has more than one women he goes to every night and as a result, he has an absurd amount of children. King Ramesses II is known to be more of a showoff rather than an effective king. King Ramesses II is also known to be a great builder. During his time of reign, he rebuilds temples, and builds new structures of his own. Ozymandias makes remarkable architectural …show more content…

The traveler describes the statue as broken apart but can make out the face of the statue. The first image from the traveler is that there are “column-like legs but no torso,” meaning no upper body, just lower body (Mikics). This shows the condition of the statue and by this description it looks as if Ozymandias is defeated. The broken statue basically shows that Ozymandias is a person not worth remembering because if he were, the statue would have been taken care of and still in one piece. The two legs are not that is all left, on the ground half buried in the sand is the head of the statue. The traveler describes the face having a “wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” with a frown (P. Shelley, line 5) This description of the face shows Ozymandias being a total ruler. The cold command description Shelley uses gives off a dismissive nature of the king and how he does not care about what the people think of him. This is the typical “tyrannical kind” of leader that Percy Shelley hates (Mikics). The traveler goes ahead and reads the inscription that is at the foot of the statue, and figures out that this is Ozymandias. Also, in the inscription Ozymandias says “look on my works, ye mighty and despair” to show off that Ozymandias builds great structures (P. Shelley, Line 11). The ironic part to what is in the inscription is that everything around the statue is a

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