Great A King As Ozymandias example essay topic

Ozymandias - by P. B Shelley "Ozymandias" is an unusual Petrarchan sonnet filled with caesuras and run-on lines, by which one is not aware of the rhyming scheme. It builds a crescendo up to the 9th verse. He creates his effects through the use of synonyms and the last words of every verse in a way sum up the story. It is a descriptive poem which is set in the background of "an antique land" and is told to us by the words of a traveler.

It is a story with a moral: never be too proud or arrogant because in the end "Nothing beside remains". All human power, it warns, shall be obliterate in time, and all the arrogance that such power generates in those who hold it is badly misplaced. Ozymandias was another name for the Egyptian pharaoh, Rameses II, a powerful tyrant who ruled in the thirteenth century B.C. So proud of his power was he that he commissioned a sculptor to carve a vast statue of him, to be placed at the heart of his realm, with all the monuments of his kingship around. And on the pedestal he had the sculptor carve a warning to other rulers: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" No matter how powerful they are, Ozymandias tells them, they should despair of ever matching his own power. Yet now, many centuries later, his magnificent city has disappeared under the desert sands and his statue is a wreck. Only "two vast and trunk less legs" remain standing.

Shelley emphasizes on size, grandeur and destruction such as the "colossal wreck" or the "shattered visage". The poem depends on alliteration ("boundless and bare"the lone and level sands stretch") and juxtaposition of contrasting images such as the "shattered visage"which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things) " for its effects. Tremendous multiple ironies also plays a very important role. The unintended pun on the word "despair" (when there is nothing left to look on and to despair) and the fact that now it is the work of the sculptor "yet survive" and outlived the work of Ozymandias himself. And the sculptor has "well those passions read" which made Ozymandias an arrogant tyrant, capturing them in his art in the "frown", the "wrinkled lip" and the "sneer of cold command". The last two verses of the sonnet are also tremendously ironic: The "wreck" is "colossal" and was supposed to be placed in a position where everyone would be able to see it "And despair" is now surrounded by the "boundless and bare" sands of the earth.

And so the word "despair" is given a further ironic twist. Ozymandias had meant that the kings of the world should despair of ever matching his greatness. Now, however, there is a different reason to despair: if even the works of so great a king as Ozymandias are wiped out by time, then the power of all kings and tyrants is precarious and doomed to ultimate collapse..