Ozymandias

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Ozymandias Themes

  • Powerful ruler who sees himself as a 'King of Kings'
  • Perhaps a great warrior and one of the most powerful men in the world.
  • Looks at how nothing, not even power lasts forever. 
  • Poet feels sorry for him or is laughing at his expense.
  • Looks and the inevitable downfall of all rulers and tyrants. 
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Ozymandias Context

  • Written in the early 1800s 
  • Percy Byshee Shelly was born in 1792
  • One of the 'romantics' 
  • Married Mary Shelly
  • Drowned at sea at the age of 29
  • Inspiration for the poem was King George the 3rd
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Ozymandias Quotes

  • 'Of that colossal wreck'- metaphor 
  • 'The hand that mocked them'- pun
  • 'I met a traveller from an antique land'- suggests that the place is old
  • 'Shattered visage lies'- unrecognisable, a statue to somone you can't tell who has a purpose anymore. 
  • 'The lone and level sands strech far away'- the lone and level sands outlast the staue, juxtaposed to the power and ego of the statue.
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Ozymandias Structure

  • Sonnet- 14 lines 
  • Iambic pentameter 
  • The rhyme is irregular- symbolic of the broken statue 
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Ozymandias Allegory

The statue in the poem, broken and falling apart in the dessert with nobody to care is an allegory of Ozymadias and every powerful man or woman, the idea that they will also drift away until they are just another grain of sand. 

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