Ozymandias, King of Nothing

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Ozymandias, King of Nothing

In "Ozymandias", Percy Byshe Shelley relates a description of a mysterious land laid to waste as told to a man by an unnamed traveler. Granted, the poem was written after Shelley had seen ruins of the ancient Egyptian Empire imported to England, but in the poem is something greater, a portrait of a man who built himself during the span of his life to a position of great power, only to be discovered centuries later with nothing but eroded stone to his name. The particular words that Shelley chose to describe a lost, grand and ruined kingdom are all words of powerful connotation. Every adjective, every noun, builds an image of something big and strong, something enormous and indestructible.

An emphasis on physical appearance is blatant. Surfacing first, above the duality and symbolism in the poem, is the immediate call to attention of the physical size and orientation of the statue. This is most notably presented in lines 2 through 4. Although only two words, "vast" and "half," are specific in relating size, "stand" and "near" connect to project exactly how the "...two vast and trunkless legs of stone" and the "shattered visage" lie. The word vast is not as common as a tired word such as "big", and helps to describe the sheer monstrosity of the base of the statue of the great king Ozymandias. To simply have two "vast" legs, without the trunk, indicates how imposing the statue must have been when intact. Ozymandias' head, somewhat fragmented and laid to rot with the sands, is half sunk. Half sunk, yet clearly still able to stir deep emotional response with its "sneer of cold command." Although the word "half" is not as impressive as "vast" and almost detracts from the imposing...

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...e sculptor, as described by Shelley, carved these two aspects of Ozymandias' persona into stone.

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," shouts the platform from which Ozymandias has been reduced to speak. What pride, what arrogance, what kind of (apparently) falsely heightened sense of self-worth did the vast and trunkless legs of stone once support? The answer comes straight from Shelley: "...the lone and level sands stretch far away, boundless and bare; encircling the entirety of a lifeless wreck, nothing beside remain." This is the kingdom of Ozymandias; the king of nothing, like a playground bully with the rug pulled out from under him years after his defeat. With careful phrasing and well-picked words, Shelley created a mighty ruler, one whose hand carefully and sternly managed and governed an unknown, invisible, and dead nation.

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