When kings rise they are mighty and powerful, but you must also remember that sometimes they fall and are long forgotten. The poem Ozymandias, tells of a king who was powerful and everybody feared and obeyed him, but now only remains are left of him. The song Viva La Vida tells you of a king who rose to power and lost it because of a traitor. The song Viva La Vida and the poem Ozymandias both have similarities and differences. The poem Ozymandias tells of a king who was very powerful, people feared him. He created statues of himself for people to admire. Now all that remains of his power are remains. What remains of him are memories that are now long forgotten and that the wind carries away. Sand that stretches for miles and miles until it
The Odyssey by Homer is an epic about a man’s return home after fighting in war. The protagonist of the epic is Odysseus, but interactions with and stories of his fellow veterans abound. The story of Agamemnon’s death upon returning home is retold and referred to numerous times and serves as a warning to Odysseus of the dangers that could exist for him in Ithaka. The ghost of Agamemnon is encountered by Odysseus in the land of the dead and is quite changed from the friend he knew and fought with at Troy. Despite his high place in life and exploits in war, Agamemnon demonstrates the suffering of the returning veteran.
When comparing and contrasting “Ozymandias”, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay, there is a strong contrast between the two. Ozymandias is a poem about a long-forgotten king who once had mighty power over his people, where as “Viva La Vida” is about a king who was overthrown. However, the similarities between the song and poem are astonishing. “Ozymandias” is similar to “Viva La Vida”because both texts mention a rockpile built upon sand for a king; because both texts show that the citizens are enemies of the king; and because they are both about a king who has lost his power.
The phrase ‘king of kings’ indicates that Ozymandias sees himself above everyone and reality. He believes that he is the strongest and most powerful being that ever lived as he even puts the ‘mighty’ in ‘despair’. He thought that because of all the power he had, he would be well remembered and that his legacy would be mentioned for thousands of years. However that is not the case, as when the ‘king’ died, no one had visited the ‘ancient land’. The adjective ‘ancient’ emphasizes how old the land is. The ‘land’ maybe Ozymandias’ but when his rule ended, so did his control and power. Everything of his was forgotten including his ‘land’ and his ‘sneer of cold command’. After he died, he was forgotten, implying that he did no good with all the power he had, instead he ‘mocked’ and bullied his people. His ‘shattered visage’ was ‘half sunk’ in the sad, implying that the people rejoiced when he was gone and didn’t care where his body went. Shelly created a character, probably a monster that was impossible to like by the people. She shows the nature of power and how it slowly slips away from the person’s grasp. First it corrupts the mind of a person and changes them, and then it slips away from their hands leaving them with nothing but arrogance, pride and
The epic poem, The Odyssey, by Homer, is about the events that happen after The Iliad. It tells the story of Odysseus and his journey home from the Trojan War. Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, encounters forces that are external and internal. These forces prevent him from returning to his homeland and achieving nostos. Although many different forces impact Odysseus’ journey home, internal forces such as recklessness and temptations hinder Odysseus and his crew from their homecoming far more greatly than external forces.
Antonio, from Bless Me, Ultima, lives stuck in a world of in-betweens, a world of borders. He must navigate this world and find his place within it, all while trying to please his parents. Tony’s surroundings and cultural background lead to this in between world and force him to pick a side before he even has an opportunity to mature. In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, Antonio is constantly searching for answers about his future and the world around him; he finds these answers through his family, environment, religion, and family friend, Ultima. Antonio must find a balance in these divided forces, which tug at him from opposite direction, and forge his own path.
Antonio, from Bless Me, Ultima, lives stuck in a world of in-betweens, a world of borders. He must navigate this world and find his place within it, all while trying to please his parents. Tony’s surroundings and cultural background lead to this in between world and force him to pick a side before he has even began to grow up. In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, Antonio is constantly searching for answers about his future and the world around him; he finds these answers through his family, environment, religion, and family friend, Ultima.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a legendary poem dated way back to early Mesopotamia. This book is extremely important because is often refereed to as the first surviving epic poems in literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written and amazingly preserved on clay tablets. This story revels the adventures and journeys that the great king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, embarked on. In Mesopotamian culture, dreams were very important to Mesopotamians. In the book, dreams were repeatedly discussed and considerably focused on. I will be discussing and breaking down what dreams all meant to the characters and people of Mesopotamia in the book of The Epic of Gilgamesh. I will bring up about how these dreams were visions, symbols, and, a way of communicating from the
Both poems explore the injustices of love and power and also the consequences of what happens with a potentially bad decision. Not only this, they both address these themes with a particular balance of the two; they both have similarities, yet they both contrast in many different ways. Each poem shares similarities which are reflections of the poets’ lives before they became literary sensations.
The relationship Antonio had with ultima was more profound than with his own mother. Ultima is a nurturer to Antonio, yet she attends to Antonio’s family. When Antonio’s Uncle Lucas was cursed under evil Tenorio’s daughters’ brujeria, Ultima conducted an intensive cleansing ceremony. Following New Mexico traditions for healers, she uses a variety of herbs from the land to cure various conditions. Antonio assisted Ultima in the mass and throughout it he encountered knowledge of spirituality and Good vs. evil. Throughout the process, Antonio becomes disquieted, he ventures the magic of Ultima being more powerful than that of the priest. However, Ultima reassures that “those who turn away from God will be wishing they had never sold their souls to the devil” p99, this teaches Antonio to remain true to God because with time comes understanding. “Now everyone depended on Ultima’s magic” p99, Ultima, like most human beings, was perceived as a witch instead of a curandero. Her goodness to everyone in el pueblo was affirmed when she cured Uncle Lucas and when she surpassed Tenebrio’s evilness. Anaya deliberately states “they could not understand why the owl had attacked Tentoria, or the power of Ultimo. But she had walked through the door, and so the power of la curandero was good”, at last, Ultima’s goodness was proven to everyone. Ultimo is Antonio’s life Mentor as she advises him to always
It is nature that destroys humankind when the sun disappears and the volcano erupts in “Darkness” and in “Ozymandias,” it is the sand and wind that causes the statue to fall. In Byron’s poem, humans lose the fight for their lives, and in Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias’s statue is powerless because it is lifeless, emphasizing the importance of the themes of life and death to the shared topic of destruction. Although they explore destruction using different language, they share the use of ideas about the destruction of civilization, and the fall of humankind because of nature, life and
The poem is based on Lord Tennyson describing of a huge sea monster that is
...the fleeting innate qualities of human beings and their world that they have constructed, giving way to the idea that mortals should live their lives as honorably as possible, so that they will be remembered by their future generations. The impermanence of the human form and its creations is heavily referred to as neither can survive throughout time, however, their words and deeds can live on through stories. The mere existence of this poem can attest to this idea.
A person's ability to develop is due to two factors, maturation and learning. Although maturation, or the biological development of genes, is important, it is the learning - the process through which we develop through our experiences, which make us who we are (Shaffer, 8). In pre-modern times, a child was not treated like they are today. The child was dressed like and worked along side adults, in hope that they would become them, yet more modern times the child's need to play and be treated differently than adults has become recognized. Along with these notions of pre-modern children and their developmental skills came the ideas of original sin and innate purity. These philosophical ideas about children were the views that children were either born "good" or "bad" and that these were the basis for what would come of their life.
Every once in a while there are songs that enclose a message that appeals to feelings of common interest as well as historical events. The interesting thing about these songs is that they give to the future listeners a perception of what was being felt about that specific moment in history. For instance, “The Wind of Change” by the Scorpions is one of the few songs that as far as I know do this. This song is about the historical changes that succeeded the downfall of communism as well as the Berlin wall. Hence, the lyric of this song encloses the feelings of a generation that sees peace and freedom for the first time after a long time of hostile political relationships. This message could be perceived after the first time the song is heard. Yet, by paying attention to the poetical devices used in this song, listener could have a better appreciation about the tone and theme that this song encloses.
In the second stanza the poet describes the things while he was praying for his daughter. He walks for an hour and notices the "sea-wind scream upon the tower", "under the arches of the bridge", "in the elms above the flooded stream." They probably represent the dreaming of the human beings and they are decisive. They are all about the present things and they block people from thinking about the future events. The last four lines of the second stanza clearly explain this idea: