In Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” the story begins with the narrator explaining how he met a traveler from an “antique” land. This traveler explains how in the dessert he saw two legs of stone, and the face of a statue laying on the sand. The traveler describes how on the pedestal there were words left behind by the king boasting to anybody who sees his statue to take a good look at his kingdom, and fear how powerful he is. However around the broken statue there was nothing but the loneliness of the barren dessert. The overall theme portrayed in this poem is that no matter how great or long lasting something is built to last, eventually it will be destroyed with time. The author shows this through the poem by carefully using imagery, and diction to illustrate that of this kingdom all that is left behind is this statue; that one day will also disappear into the dessert. I will be going through this poem line by line in order to explain what I believe this poem to mean, and how each line contributes to the overall message of the poem.
Right in the first line the author sets the setting by having the narrator explain how, “I met a traveler from an antique land / Who said:” (Shelley 1). This line lets the reader know that the narrator met someone who came from an “antique” land, and that this traveler is going to continue the story. However the author decided to describe this character as “antique” showing that the traveler is someone who comes from a land that is outdated, or more primitive than that of the narrator’s, a place that could have been home to a civilization that has passed away or is now simply gone. What’s important is that the author decided to use the word antique to create this effect on the reader that this is ...
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...obligated to build such a sculpture in order to emphasize his power and accomplishments. And yet of all his accomplishments nothing is left to show for it except the “boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away” (Shelley 13-14). These two lines specifically depict exactly what is left of Ozymandias’s great kingdom. Which is nothing, nothing but the sand and broken statue remain of his “works”. Regardless of what kind of king he might have been in the end the sands of time swallowed it whole and left behind the nothingness that desserts carry.
Overall Shelly’s poem “Ozymandias” is a short sonnet, but within these fourteen lines through her careful use of imagery and diction brings together a story, with the overall theme that nothing lasts forever. Regardless if this is about a statue, a tyrant, or even a traveler all things come to an end.
‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Shelley and ‘My Last Duchess’ have many links and similar themes such as power, time and art. ‘Ozymandias’ shows the insignificance of human life after passing time whilst ‘My Last Duchess’ speaks of his deceased wife in a form of a speech.
"Ozymandias" written by Percy Shelley, represents the psychological forces of the id as well as the superego, as a charceter in a poem, and as a poetic work. In the poem we encounter a traveler. He brings a message from the desert. There is a statue that exists alone among the rocks and sand. Stamped on the pedestal of that statue are these words, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
The first major message from the poem, “Ozymandias” is that all great things come to end. Whether it is about a person, a country, or an idea, these...
Waddington grabs hold of this notion and retrieves the trope of the “old blind woman in the tower” by giving her new life with the restructuring of the poem (Waddington 4-5). While Tennyson’s epic poem utilizes the strict confines of iambic pentameter and heroic verse known by Homer’s original Odyssey, Penelope’s updated narrative bleeds out through a variant, but equally structured schematic. Waddington’s six stanzas contain a slow moving enjambment of choppier and more laborious lines, creating a certain rocking of language emergent from the first lines: “You’ve come / at last from / all your journeying” (Waddington 1-3). This motion of the poem effuses the tediousness of Penelope’s long wait, as well the feeling of the line by line repetition of the legendary loom through which her story (and her husband’s) is woven.
In the text Bishop states, “The monument is one-third set against/ a sea; two thirds against a sky.” (line 18) It is suggested that the monument is one with nature. The narrator goes on to state, “A sea of narrow, horizontal boards/lies out behind our lonely monument,/its long grains alternating right and left/like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,/and motionless.” Here the author personifies the monument by describing it as “swarming-still”. The phrase swarming-still is contradictory because an object cannot move and be still at the same time. The narrator personifies the monument as to express its life-like qualities. The location of the monument is never stated. A second voice joins the poem and questions the location of their presence, “‘Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor,/ Or in Mongolia?’” (line 33) Without knowledge on the location of the monument it is difficult to know what it means. The narrator ponders on what the monuments purpose is, “An ancient promontory,/ an ancient principality whose artist-prince/ might have wanted to build a monument/ to mark a tomb or boundary, or make/ a melancholy or romantic scene of it…” (line 35) The narrator herself is unsure of who created the monument or why. This pushes the audience to develop their own perceptions as the narrator brainstorms about its significance. A voice separate from the narrator states, “‘But that queer sea looks made of wood,/half-shining,like a driftwood sea./And the sky looks wooden, grained with cloud./ It’s like a stage-set; it is all so flat!/Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!/What is that?’”(line 40) This voice questions the scenery surrounding the monument. The narrator states that, “It is the monument” This implies that the narrator perceives the surrounding environment to be part of the monument itself. Another voice says, “‘Why did you bring me here to see
All Shelley might be doing both here and in the ‘Mutability’ lines (as also perhaps in ‘Ozymandias’) is describing the imperfection and impermanence of worldly circumstances. Mary Shelley’s purpose in using her husband’s lines might be no more than a device to engender feelings of pathos in the reader’s heart at the series of losses suffered by the protagonist.
Moderata Fonte’s Venetian ladies debated the worth of women while cavorting in their fictional garden in 1605; Tempel Anneke met her unhappy fate in the 1660s. The seemingly enlightened and forward-looking feminist attitudes articulated in Fonte's text were absent from the Brunswick courtroom where the allegations against Tempel Anneke eventually brought about her death. The two accounts illustrate the differences in the attitudes towards women between European states during the 17th century. The differences are technically religiously based, however, they deal with the differences of the specific regional factors of the areas discussed. The differences explain why the attitudes of Fonte’s ladies and the persecutors of Tempel coexisted in roughly the same era. Fonte's ladies are Italian Catholics, and Anna's neighbors are German Protestants, therefore, the ideals of women are varied based on religious experience. Additionally, the theory of reason of state that came about with the consolidation of authority consisted of centralization and secularism that subordinated the social role ...
Starting out the poem, the original narrator’s tone is indifferent to the story of the ancient ruler. However, as the speakers change from the narrator to the traveler to Ozymandias himself (through the words imbued on the statue), the tone becomes more aggressive and negative. Along with this shift in tone, the descriptions of the statue of Ozymandias get increasingly more vivid as the poem goes forward and the degrees of separation between the speaker and Ozymandias decrease. The backtracking of the distance between the narrator and Ozymandias represents the idea that as time increases, the remembrance and legacy of a person fades. In this case, the memory of Ozymandias is completely unaware to the narrator at the beginning of the poem. In addition to the point of views, “Ozymandias” has numerous instances of juxtaposition and irony.
The subject of this poem is drawn from a line in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: ‘‘Mariana in the moated grange.’’ This describes a young woman waiting for her lover Angelo, who has abandoned her upon the loss of her dowry. From the outset Tennyson creates an impression of profound disrepair and decrepitude, the ‘sheds’ are left broken and abandoned, the thatch is ‘worn’ and covered in weeds. Everything is coated in rust, moss or dust, unmoving, inactive and still. This strong suggestion of stagnation recurs throughout, and is emphasized by the refrain of the poem:
Ozymandias starts by mentioning that the speaker met a mysterious “traveler from an antique land” who tells him this story. This mysterious traveler paints an image in your mind with his description of the remains of this colossal statue. “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.” This are possible the legs of the statue while the torso and mid-section of the statue is missing. The statue is in pieces and destroyed.
This powerful epic poem reaches greatness on many levels. It is a poem which expresses the Homeric tradition of a classic epic work. However, interpreting Omeros as simply a modern day version of the Iliad or Odyssey takes away from the greatness of this work. Not only does Walcott borrow and play off ideas and themes expressed by Homer, but he brings his own life experience into the story and makes it part of the tradition. The way which Walcott uses Omeros to tell a great deal of the history of his native island of St. Lucia is remarkable. Walcott’s writing and telling of this epic poem is a credit to his heritage, homeland, and the classical tradition, and show that the epicpoem is still an outstanding work of art when used by a masterful writer such as DerekWalcott.
This poem describes a story told you by a passing traveler of a ruined statue of a king, Ozymandias, seemingly in a desolate desert. On the statue in is inscribed, “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’/Nothing beside remain” (“Ozymandias” 10-12). Upon examination of the surrounding land, we realize that the once vast kingdom around the statue has been taken back by the desert, leaving the ironic message on the statue. This poem shows Shelley’s ideas of how all is temporary, especially mankind and our achievements. Showing romantic values, Shelley believed nature is much greater than man and no matter how big your kingdom, mather nature will always take back what was 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 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 form of depersonalization, an illustration that mortals are insignificant and. powerless when compared to nature. Even though Ozymandias is a king, he is.... ... middle of paper ... ...