Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 1

Story + message of ‘Ozymandias’:

Answer 1

• The narrator is recalling his meeting of a traveller who tells the narrator about the statue of Ozymandias
• Ozymandias may also be an allegory about individual selfishness
• The king constructed a statue to declare his own greatness, effectively as the ruler of the world; however, nothing around his statue remains
• He seems to have lived only for his own glory and his own benefit; yet this “colossal wreck” seems to imply that striking such an attitude and living in such fashion will, in the end, leave one miserable and lonely, without support or friendship - one’s social and psychological landscape will be “boundless and bare.”
• Power is ephemeral (doesn’t last forever)
  o Ultimately nature and time last forever – Shelley was a romantic poet
  o No matter how much pride and how large your hubris is, it will all be washed away by time and nature

Question 2

What is the tone of ‘Ozymandias’?

Answer 2

• Mocking and sarcastic tone
• Reveals the irony of the king’s intention juxtaposed against the fate of the ruined statue
• Ozymandias’s speech - arrogant and boastful tone

Question 3

What is the imagery used in Ozymandias?

Answer 3

• Central image is of the shattered statue of Ozymandias – “shatter’d visage”, “two vast and trunkless legs”, “wrinkled lip”
  o These images help the readers visualise the status of the broken statue
• Imagery surrounding nature and the vast desert the crumbling statue was found in

Question 4

What was Percy Bysshe Shelley part of?

Answer 4

• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822) was one of a group of poets called The Romantics
• The Romantic poets often wrote about nature and strong emotions (the term ‘Romantics’ does not relate to romance as in love)

Question 5

How wealthy was Percy Bysshe Shelley?

Answer 5

He came from a wealthy family and was in line to inherit both riches and his grandfather’s role as an MP

Question 6

What was Percy Bysshe’s Shelley’s education like?

Answer 6

He was expelled from university for writing about atheism which led to his father disinheriting him

Question 7

What was Shelley known as and what were his views?

Answer 7

• Shelley was well known as a ‘radical’ during his lifetime, critical of both the British monarchy and government and sympathising with the ideology of the French Revolution
• As Shelley was highly critical of the British government, he wanted to pull his money out of any kind of investment that supported the government

Question 8

How does «Tell that its sculptor well those passions read» tie in with Romanticism

Answer 8

• ties in with the traditional Romantic era idea of everlasting art; how humans are ephemeral, but art is forever
• In Romanticism, imagery played a key role in the visualization of the subject
• Ozymandias, the King, has his statue pictured with a frown and a daunting sense of command
• The sculptor is depicting the overwhelming power and fear that was struck into the people

Question 9

Context for Ozymandias’s statue:

Answer 9

• The statue Shelley refers to in the poem is a real statue: pieces of it were discovered by an Italian archaeologist in 1817 and bits of it were transported back to England to go on display in the British Museum
• The statue of Ramesses II of Egypt (the name Ozymandias comes from the Greek name for the Egyptian King)
• Ramesses II began his reign in 1279 BC and he was one of the most powerful pharaohs of the Egyptian empire
• Ramesses was well-known for erecting vast monuments in his own image, highlighting his extravagance and his own opinion of himself as a living God

Question 10

When did Shelley write this poem?

Answer 10

• Shelley apparently wrote ‘Ozymandias’ after hearing about its discovery
• He and a fellow poet both wrote poems about it – Shelley’s poem was published in a newspaper (The Enquirer in 1818)

Question 11

1. “I met a traveller from an antique land”

Answer 11

• poem opens in a classic ‘traveller’s tale’ mode, with the narrator retelling a story
• The language is unadorned
• the word “antique” suggests that something interesting will emerge
• the rest of the poem consists of a quotation - the speaker of the poem is barely present, but the traveller-narrator who takes over gives the story the flavour of a legendary tale
• “antique” – fragility, from a bygone era

Question 12

2. “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert…”

Answer 12

• “trunkless legs” – informs the reader of the statue’s lack of body and therefore lack of heart
• this may signify a lack of connection between his body and his brain – Ozymandias has no insight or intellect to recognise his limitations
• half-rhyme of “stone” and “frown”- structure imperfect, broken down like statue

Question 13

3. “Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,”

Answer 13

• remains of the upper portion of the statue have eroded and collapsed, remaining as only sand-to-be
• next to the legs is the face buried and in pieces
• incomplete as only “half” his face us shown – 2 sides of human nature?
• to be successful leader he had to keep his personal side private and hidden
• suggests that he believes his power to be solid and unshakeable, but it vanished after his death – an illusion in his mind that crumbled with time
• “shatter’d” – sharp + strong adjective, contraction adds to the force of the word
• sibilance – “sh”’s and “s”’s in “sand”, “sunk” and “shattered” – perhaps like wind whistling over the sand dunes
• symbolise the eeriness of passing time and degraded power

Question 14

4. “whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read”

Answer 14

• The contrast between the hot desert and Ozymandias’ cold sneer calls attention to his haughtiness – no warm ruler
• “sneer” – contemptuous + unpleasant sound which reflects the meaning
• “cold command” – hard alliterative “c”’s and long vowel might imitate the harsh sound of a self-important man giving orders, looked at people in disdain
• “tell that its sculptor well those passions read” – irony, the fact that Ozymandias was so apparently desperate to be remembered, yet it is the sculptor that is praised and admired for managing to capture the arrogant looks of his employer

Question 15

5. “’My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’”

Answer 15

• bold + confident statement declaring strange, long, harsh-sounding, exotic name
• only line which contains the king’s name – has an extra syllable, departure from regular iambic pentameter of the rest of the poem
• “King of Kings” has rhythmic resonance – the Pharaoh is setting himself up as God
• heavily ironic considering his memorial statue is described as being destroyed and “shatter’d” – makes him look foolish and highlights the arrogance that still exists in some rules
• “ye mighty” – archaic term distances the reader, lost it’s impact
• “and despair!” – chilling and signify inhuman cruelty + 2 words sound slow, elongated and ominous
• “despair!” – exclamatory sentence, ironic as no one in the desert to listen to his demand

Question 16

6. Nothing beside remains, Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck,”

Answer 16

• Shelley’s conclusions highlights the myth of permanence – everything, even the most imposing buildings and monuments will eventually fall
• Ramesses II may have ordered the construction of the most glorious works of his time, but the desert ultimately reclaimed them
• following the couplet there is a short, terse unequivocal sentence “Nothing beside remains.” – the juxtaposition is striking, an anti-climax following the irony - pathos
• “colossal wreck” – ruins of the tomb spread out before the traveller OR wreck of civilisation; legacy is a mess

Question 17

7. “boundless and bare, / The lone and level sand stretch far away.”

Answer 17

• uses the pharaoh’s story as a moral lesson: while power and wealth are significant in the moment, after death, everything declines
• While it is true that Ramses is still remembered — he is studied today by Egyptologists — but not with the respect or awe the pharaoh would have wanted
• In this poem the tone is contempt and wry humour
• Yet the poem holds a space open for art: the statue itself “yet survives,” as a final remnant of Ramses’s kingdom
• The pharaoh’s “works” have been reduced to the low and level sands of the desert, but the sculptor’s work – the statue itself – still “tell[s]” a story, still communicates its message
• The words inscribed on the pedestal also remain, suggesting the longevity of textual art as well – like Shelley’s poem itself
• “lone and level sands” – metaphorical levelling, no matter how rich/powerful/famous you are in life, in death we are all equal and have nothing
• alliterative “l” sounds and long, almost onomatopoeic vowels, suggesting vastness and flatness
• Shelley uses sand as a tool to distance the reader from Ozymandias
• The presence of sand is linked to the persistence of time. “…in a landscape of sand, the dust to which both Ozymandias’ “works” and nature itself have been reduced through the workings of time”
• pathetic + sense of pathos that his once immense statue has been reduced to almost just some rubble

Question 18

Semantic field of destruction – “shatter’d”, “wrinkled”, “lifeless”, “decay” and “wreck”

Answer 18

• juxtaposed with semantic field of power
• ongoing theme depicts the idea that all power can be destroyed
• links with Shelley’s hatred of arrogant high profile figures

Question 19

3 different perspectives

Answer 19

• initially 1st person perspective – narrator is reciting what he has been told from a “traveller” he met in the desert
• Ozymandias speaks at end of poem – least relevant

Question 20

Loose sonnet written in iambic pentameter

Answer 20

• Petrarchan sonnet – octave + sestet
• sonnet form used to mirror Ozymandias’s egotistic love of himself OR ironic love poem (love poem of the fact that dictatorial rules will be reduced to rubble)
• loose sonnet – idea of taking strict form and not following it completely, disintegrating like statue

Question 21

Octave + sestet

Answer 21

• first octave describes the statue and its different parts to show its deterioration over time

Question 22

Iambic pentameter changes in line 11-12

Answer 22

• change in meter draws focus to the arrogant voice of the once powerful Ozymandias (line 11)
• line 12 is used to reflect the poet’s message that human power and civilisation with be defeated by time as “Nothing beside remains” meaning that the structures built have decayed and faded with time

Question 23

Allegorical nature of the poem

Answer 23

Allegorical nature of poem – deliver s a strong message about power and how it is ephemeral

Question 24

Cyclical nature of poem

Answer 24

• starts with description of desert and sand and ends with description of desert and sand
• nature can reset everything
• in the middle is Ozymandias’s crumbled statue which will eventually be turned into sand