Ozymandias

“Ozymandias” is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this poem the speaker is someone who meets a traveler who talks about what he saw when he travelled to an “Antique Land”. This antique land just so happens to be Egypt. Many of us know of Egypt as a place far from here that is in the scorching dessert and has miles and miles of grainy sand, also with a couple of pyramids and the famous Sphinx, a statue of a huge lion. This traveler talks about a disfigured statue he spots on his journey.…

Around 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE, a pharaoh by the name Ramesses the Great, also known as Ozymandias, became the ruler of the nineteenth dynasty in ancient Egypt. When Percy Bysshe Shelley heard of the decayed statue of Ramesses the Great, he decide to base a poem, Ozymandias, on the ancient pharaoh. Ozymandias is one of Shelley’s most famous works due to the vast assortment of literary context, including the imagery, the deeper meaning of word choices, and the different morals that could be…

unflattering and will never change. Rorschach is the character of extreme moral rigidness. Even when he is confronted with the world returning to war he decides that it doesn’t matter, it is better to stick to his moral principles than to compromise. Ozymandias sees the world threw the mantra ‘the ends justify the means,’ seeing the end product of what he has done more important than the action they got them there. What I think makes Watchmen so interesting is the third point of view, something…

death. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems “To Wordsworth” and “Ozymandias” examine the lives of two remarkably different men; however, in their contemplation of the two lives, both poems agree on the universal elements of transience and permanence in different aspects of human life. “To Wordsworth” is an elegy for a humble man whose life, although it spanned a brief time in the stretch of human existence,…

if there is no one there to presence it.Percy Shelley tries to illustrate thisin the sonnet “Ozymandias.”In the poem the emperor builds his empire and image to invoke fear in anybody in his presence.As the poem progresses the reader is made aware that the empire is nowhere near its former glory, just being another fallen empire.Because of this the reader is dependent of the narrator to relate on Ozymandias’ leaving the emporer in a vulnerability he was not acclimated to.Even the strongest and…

Pride comes before the fall. The main characters in both “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Ozymandias” are very prideful. They both put great importance in their individual statures. In one story, there is the very superficial and conceited “lady” being the Grandmother. In the other story, there is the great “king of kings” Ozymandias. The two of them find out that pride can often blind you. In the Bible, in Proverbs 16 it says “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”…

song about how when we die we can't take things with us. We might as well be generous now and not live life for the popularity and possessions, because we all end up in the same place anyway. In the poem “On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness” and “Ozymandias” time affects great things turning them into forgotten things. “On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness” has a main theme of time. Time displayed in…

time for these problems and the writers of this time reflected day-to-day struggles with poverty, the crushing power of the ruling classes and the previous fall of the French nobles at the hands of those beneath them in various ways. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” was one such politically driven poem. The idea that a civilization will be unable to outlast a work of art, in this case a statue of a probably long-since dead king was a reference to the turmoil England was in at the time. Shelley’s own…

in his poem, “Ozymandias,” depicts the visual of an antiquated statue of a king who’s ruthless actions resulted in utter destruction. Shelley’s purpose is to portray the repercussions of individuals’ egocentric actions. The speaker’s utilization of diction, figurative language, and tone articulates the notion that one’s ambition to solidify their dominance will end in a fatalistic downfall. Shelley begins his poem with the visual of a traveller’s depiction of King Ozymandias statue. He…

Percy Bysshe Shelley in this poem deals a lot with the idea of decay of power and art over time as well as the emptiness of pride in a long-term perspective, especially when considering the words on the “pedestal” of Ozymandias’ statue. It is clear that Shelley aims to introduce questions of time and its effect on pre-existing political regimes and ancient art, especially with “an antique land” mentioned in the opening line, a rather old civilization that has existed for, perhaps, several…