Ozymandias

• Big idea

  • power is temporary, no matter how powerful or tyrannical the ruler is
  • Nature is more powerful than any other human power
  • Futility and impermanence of human power
• Structure 


  Iambic pentameter

  > (Heatbeat), linked to sonnets as he loves himself

  Sonnet

  > love poem, reflective of ozymandias pride and love for himself

  Enjambment

  > Uneven pattern- impermanence, broken nature of the statue

  10 syllables except line 10

  > has 11

  > See himself greater than god
• "I met a traveller from an antique land"


  Imagery

  Personification "antique land"

  > evokes a sense of distance and mystery

  > Passes responsibility of opinions to a stranger
• "Two vast trunkless legs of stone"/"stand in the desert"

  Metaphor "trunkless legs"

  > sense of decay and destruction

  > Transience of power and glory

  Irony

  > his statue is destroyed

  Caesura

  > end of power mocks ozymandia self-importance
• "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies..."

  Metaphor

  > "shattered visage"

  > imagery of a half buried face, empathises Ozymandias' insignificance that even nature overpowers the greatest ruler
• "MY name is Ozymandias, King of Kings/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

  Direct speech

  > gives voice to his arrogance and hubris

  Irony

  > Thinks he's eternal

  > 11 syllables to mark his importance as he breaks the structure

  > desolate ruins and ruined empire

  > Cautionary reminder
• "sneer of cold demand"

  Aliteration

  Plosives

  > about his tyranny

  > Imitates superiority