Ozymandias Essay

What goes along in the mind of an arrogant yet admired and mighty ruler, might not be in favor of what the power of nature holds and that ensures nothing lasts forever. I believe this is what the English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, meant when he wrote his terrific and empowering sonnet called Ozymandias. Published in 1818 it tells the story of a powerful man whose magnificent sculpture faded into sand as transparent as the ruler’s once powerful throne.

The poem starts with the statement of meeting a traveler, which initially shapes the direction the poem might go in. The traveler mentioned in the first lines supposedly visited ‘’an antique land’’ in which he had seen nothing but a ruined statue, where only the stone legs remained standing.

natural power. The poem is written in first-persona style, in which the author himself describes his encounter with the traveler. The author, Percy Bysshe Shelley employs numerous techniques to emphasize the pointlessness in a man's desire to achieve immortality and the arrogance of those in power to prove their dominance and demand their praise. These techniques mostly carry its impact in symbolism and figures of speech, including irony, metaphor and

The sculptor ‘’well those passions read’’, while the sculptire itself is displayed as 'frown', 'wrinkled lip', 'and sneer of cold command'. This reveals a clear contrast between these images while bringing positive attitude towards the sculptor but negative one to the sculpted one, Ozymandias. The author suggests that the ‘’vast’’ statue has become almost nothing and has lost its importance and main value. The statue is ‘’trunkless’’, ‘’half-sunk’’and ‘’shatter'd’’. It is a ‘’wreck’’ and has came through ‘’decay’’. The repetition of such a negative imagery stresses the idea that Ozymandias' desire to achieve immortal fame, glory and admiration was totally unreal and childish. This is further reinforced by the alliteration, ‘’boundless and bare’’ and ‘’lone and level’’. The statue is surrounded by nothing but never-ending dessert and, which may symbolize the unimportance in such a big