Power In Ozymandias

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Shelley explores the illusion of power through “Ozymandias” by using the forgotten legacy of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses II and the decaying of the statue he had built in the sands of nature. Blake, however, explores the injustice of power in “London” by describing the reality of the masses in England around the time of the Industrial Revolution, and contrastingly, how the institutions (royalty, religion, etc.) had the power to end the suffering but chose not to.

Shelley uses alliterative words to describe the environment surrounding the statue in order to emphasise the emptiness of the desert and the paltry of the Pharaoh’s legacy. The repeated consonants in “boundless and bare”, “lone and level”, infer that the space around the …show more content…

This is shown through the poem having a cyclical structure, and ending the same way it began, with the narrator reciting the effects of power on the masses, and through the constant rhythm of the narrator's “wander”. Despite building up to what sounds like a demand for rebellion in stanza three, Blake returns back to reciting the effect that the imbalance of power has in stanza four, “the young harlot’s curse”, “the marriage hearse” to reflect that there is no escape from the suffering. The use of the oxymoron, “the marriage hearse”, although literally could be referencing the damage a prostitute could do to a family with venereal disease, causing the emotional death of the relationship with the lack of sex, or the literal death the disease could cause, it also exposes how little power, or hope the people of society were destined to …show more content…

This poem is fixed and organized, reflecting the stability of power that humans believe they have. However, it's not a regular sonnet, doesn't have a regular sonnet rhyme scheme and more importantly it's not a poem about love or passion (although it could be interpreted as a mockery as Ozymandias’ love for himself). Instead, Shelly combines the traditional Petrarchan Sonnet form, using the octave, volta, and sestet, with the Shakespearean rhyme scheme of ABAB. However, midway, he employs his own rhyme scheme, for lines 9-12, the rhyme scheme is EDEF, rather than EFEF. This could be employed to mock Ozymandias, since the change in the rhyme scheme manages to rhyme “lifeless things” with “King of Kings”, however, alternatively, Shelly could have used the fact that the regular sonnet form has been broken and repeatedly changed throughout the course of history to illustrate his point about how power doesn’t last forever and is likely to switch controls over the course of

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