Analysis of Ozymandias
Analysis of “Ozymandias” “Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a fourteen-line sonnet poem that is metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme of the poem is not the traditional Italian Petrarchan form but it is similar, using the form ABACADEDFEGHGH. The name of the poem is symbolic of a famous pharaoh by the name of Ramses who was known as Ozymandias to the Greeks, in which the statue in the poem is representative of. The poem starts in the first person, “I” but then immediately switches focus to recalling a story from the “traveller from an antique land.” The traveler then becomes the subject of the rest of the poem. We are unsure of who the traveler is, or was, from the first line but the use of the word “antique” suggests that the story takes place either a long time ago or in a place that has a lot of history, such as ancient Egypt. In the second line of the poem, we are given an image of “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” standing in the desert. There is no upper torso so it is just a column-like statue of the remaining legs of a person and no body that is still standing in the middle of the desert after the rest of the statue is gone. The third and fourth line tells us that the “shattered visage lies” on the sand near the still standing legs. “Visage” means face so that implies that the head of the statue lies “half sunk,” or buried, in the sand also “shattered” like the entire statue. Also on the fourth line, we see an image of a “frown” and a “wrinkled lip” in the fifth line suggesting that the face of the statue is not completely shattered since there is still some visible expression. At this point of the poem, it is still unsure of whom the statue is representative of but based on the description of it, whoever it was, was unhappy. Contrastingly, the description, the “sneer of cold command” could also suggest that the facial expression was the expression of someone in power, or command. Starting with line six, the attention shifts from
Cited: Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias.” Poetry X. Ed. Jough Dempsey. 19 Jun 2003. 06 Nov. 2013