INTERPRETATION OF OZYMANDIAS
Percy Bysshe Shelley in Ozymandias presents to us a sonnet in which a traveler finds a ruined statue in the desert and gives its description. The sculpture is of a king named Ozymandias, as suggested by the title of poem, and the traveler looks at the decayed, “half sunk” (Shelley 5) statue in amazement. The poet tries to convey to the readers how everything looses power over time by symbolically using a decayed statue of a king. The narrator of this poem tells us that he met the traveler in an antique land and he described the statue to him (Shelley 1). The fact that the poet mentions “an antique land” (Shelley 1), makes us think of the land as really old. So from the starting we get a hint so as to how old the statue is. The poet mentions that the legs were vast, ma . . .
The rhyme scheme makes readers read the poem in a sing-song way, ironically different from the content of the poem. The author very ironically tells us how the king was very powerful and wanted everyone to do what he tells but instead “his works”, the statue, is left as ruins, and he has no power at all. By showing us how the statue lost its importance over time, the poet is able to put across a larger point that nothing is constant and everything changes over time. His statue even says, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair” (Shelley 11). The poet also manages to put across her message in the poem more effectively through the form of the poem. The poet starts with rhyme scheme ABAB and then ends with ABAB. We see how “nothing beside remains” (Shelley 12) remained. By doing this, the poet manages to symbolically tell us that the king might have been powerful but lost his power over time and the only thing left is his decayed statue. There doesn’t seem to be any other rhyme scheme in the sonnet apart from these. This relates to the irony of how the statue of the king has such a powerful message engraved on it but has decayed over time. This shows us how the statue has deteriorated over time. The poet very cleverly integrates form with the theme of the poem to convey his message more effectively. This is very effective because the readers are able to imagine the broken statue through the form itself. The poet describes the face of the sculpture as a “shattered visage” (Shelley 4) with “wrinkled lip” (Shelley 5). This makes us think of the king as being extremely powerful but also cruel.
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