Ozymandias

• "sneer of cold command'

  • rulers have no concept of sympathy - malicious cruelty - king's arrogance, confidence and superiority
  • alliteration of the hard 'c' to add a biting and dismissive tone
  • an army leader without emotion such as Napoleonn - cruel and harsh
• "nothing beside remains.'

  • Volta emphasises the quote by abruptly shifting from the statue's former glory to its current ruin, highlighting the loss of power
  • caesura
  • speaker mocks and belittles ozymandias
  • juxtaposes previous lines
• "lone and level sands stretch far away'

  • alliteration and sibilance emphasising the feeling of empty space in the desert
  • 'far away' sounds almost childlike and like a fairytale as if he was just a story once upon a time a time
  • metaphor for passage of time and how time and nature will reclaim tyrannical power
  • "stretch" - suggest human nature will outlast humanity - our place eon earth is only temporary
  • desert setting - a reference to how sand is linked with time and the passage of it
• context

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley was a romantic poet and wrote a lot about the power of nature.
  •  Shelley was considered to be a ‘radical’ and Ozymandias reflects this side of his character. He is writing about the dangers of thinking you are invincible, a timeless message
• structure

  • The poem is a sonnet, although it mixes the two main types of sonnet forms. This could show the broken nature of the statue and Ozymandias’ rule.
  • The majority of the poem is through the voice of the ‘traveller’. As it has no stanzas it is like a long story being told by travellers
• half sunk a shattered visage lies

  • face of the statue is partially buried in sand - time's erasure, nature reclaiming what man once built. It also suggests incompleteness—only part of the figure remains, emphasiing decay
  • face once meant to project authority, power, or greatness is now damaged and discarded