What is the attitude portrayed in "Ozymandias"?
Great poem and great posts! The irony is hard to miss, I think. Here we are in this wasteland of a desert. The last lines say the sand stretches far away, "lone and level," "boundless and bare." There is literally nothing for miles in any direction--except for this "colossal wreck." The statue (more like a monument, actually) was once the mark of a great leader, Ozymandias , who controlled all the lands and peoples as far as the eye could see. He called himself the "king of kings," and he warned anyone drawing near enough to read the statue that they were to observe what he had created and "despair." Apparently they were to tremble in their boots (sandals?) at the mere thought of "messin' with The Man." Now, of course, nothing is left but a "shattered visage" and a whole lotta nothin'. I love #4 post's commentary about that. This...
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is a story of pride and arrogance about eternal fame which, ironically, turns to nothing but dust...or sand.
I agree with the above post. Shelley's poem is full of irony, and the diction used throughout the lines suggests this. The statue was once great, but is now a "colossal Wreck," a "shattered visage." The Pharaoh and his legacy were supposed to be immortal, yet the symbol of his legacy has collapsed and is being swallowed by the desert.
How does the traveler determine Ozymandias's character in Shelley's "Ozymandias"?
There are several ways the traveler in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" gains information about the King Ozymandias and what sort of man he was. The first source of information is the inscription on the base of the statue:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
This inscription not only tells the traveler that Ozymandias was a king, but also gives the reader an impression of his arrogance, especially in the way it proclaims Ozymandias not just a king but the "king of kings" and greater than all "the Mighty."
Finally, the traveler looks at the expression on the face of the statue, and describes it as:
a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read ...
In other words, the sculptor was such a good artist that a viewer, looking at the sculpture, gets a strong sense of the personality of the king it was portraying.
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