A Shattered Legacy The poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley tells a story about the statue of King Ozymandias that lies within a desert of an ancient land. In this poem, Percy Shelley shares his view on the legacy of power by using the statue as a symbol of Ozymandias’s legacy. Shelley achieves this by creating situational irony between what is seen and what is supposed to be. This is expressed through the juxtaposition of the specific word choices used to describe the statuary imagery combined with the statue’s purpose of being a major piece of Ozymandias’s legacy. All of these work together to convey the idea that any legacy, no matter how great, will ultimately deteriorate. The statuary imagery within the poem gives a clear depiction of what Ozymandias’s statue has come to be. The poem opens out with “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” standing in the desert of an “antique land”, accompanied by a “half-sunk” and “shattered” visage. Immediately, the decayed imagery puts forth the statue’s …show more content…
First of all, the statue’s body is nowhere to be found. This represents the erosion of Ozymandias’s kingdom into nothingness, as shown by how the statue is now surrounded with nothing but the “lone and level sands” of his ancient kingdom. There is simply no substance with which to back up his supposed legacy. Second, the shattered visage half-sunken in sand mirrors Ozymandias’s shattered and fading wish of preserving his legacy. His legacy lives on through the statue, yes, but as shown by how the visage is half-sunk, it is on its last legs. Finally, as how the legs are the foundation of the body, the statue’s legs, are symbolic of the foundation of Ozymandias’s legacy. Like there is nothing more upon the statue’s two vast and trunkless legs of stone, there is nothing more to build upon Ozymandias’s legacy other than this broken down