Ozymandias

Question 1

Themes

Answer 1

-Brevity of power
-power of art (shelly portrays art as the best tool in preserving humanity’s legacy)
-man vs nature (Ozymandias may be the king of kings, but even kings can be defeated by mere grains of sand)

Question 2

‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ‘

Answer 2

-Adjective choice ‘vast’ (colossal at end) emphasizes/stresses the immmense size –> suggests power (legacy desired) which is JUXTAPOSED w/ the broken statue (legacy left)

Question 3

‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert … near them, on the sand’

Answer 3

Caesura emphasizes broken nature of the statue

Question 4

‘Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’

Answer 4

-Sibilance ‘sunk’ ‘shuttered’ ‘visage’ ‘lies’ - hissing mockery of shelly (author) coming through
-visual imagery of ‘frown’ ‘wrinkled lip’ (suggests disgust) ‘sneer’ (cruel mocking smile) describe Ozymandias as:
-serious
-dictatorial (ruler w/ total power)
-disgust + disrespect towards his subjects
+‘cold command’ –> ruled w/out mercy+love –> harsh alliteration emphasizes cruelty of his rule (also the frown..)

Question 5

‘The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed’(3)

Answer 5

Shelly wanted to show power of sculptor
Irony- ozymandias is the one supposed to be powerful, yet the sculptor had the power to define his legacy
Double meaning of mocked– formed & shaped VS made fun of

Question 6

‘On the pedestral (where statues stand) these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, kink of kings:
Look on my Works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Answer 6

-Ozymandia sees himself as god-like
‘-King of kings’ absolute power + The fact that even this “king of kings” is decaying
suggests that no amount of power can withstand the merciless passage of time
-capitalisation ‘Look on my Works’–> importance in his eyes –>irony bc all hisnworks are now ruins
-verb choice ‘despair’ suggests other’s should lose hope

Question 7

‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare’ 1(2)

Answer 7

Tonal change=
-tone softens + now doesnkt describe the power but what is left : nature
-time + nature have destroyed his power

Question 8

‘The lone levels of sand stretch far away’

Answer 8

Stretch far away physically and time wise
Soft alliteration: reinforces image of the peace of nature

Question 9

“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”—with the line “Nothing beside remains.”

Answer 9

-The people and places he ruled over are gone, leaving only an abandoned desert
-a savage contradiction makes the king’s prideful dare ridiculous

Question 10

‘lone and level sands stretch far away’

Answer 10

Symbol of:
-nature’s power: sand has eroded + buried statue and all of Ozymandias’s works –> reminder that nature can destroy all human achievements
-time: it destroyed the statue over time
idea of sand in an hourglass, sand also represents time itself, which has similarly worn down and eventually buried Ozymandia’s empire

Question 11

Enjambment last two lines

Answer 11

• only two consecutive enjambed lines in the poem:
  + suggests that the strength of the desert is more powerful than the strength of any human artifact, and will in the end wear all traces of humanity away

Question 12

Tone

Answer 12

-Ironic

Question 13

Lose sonnet(3)

Answer 13

-irregular rhyme scheme + tonal change in line 12
=brings disorder to limitations + rules of ozymandia
Sonnet- not for strong feelings (like usual) but to show power