“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a sonnet in iambic pentameter which vividly describes a traveler's tale and experience of coming across a large statue of the late king Ozymandias. The poem is composed of an octave and a sestet, this form establishes perspective and the context of the poem and allows the reader to understand the setting of the traveler's tale. The sonnet is also irregular, meaning that it doesn’t fit into any specific rhyme scheme, which also draws the readers in as it contains a hidden meaning. This poem explores the topics such as fate and legacy, and one’s desire for eternal remembrance that is met with the inevitable, death. Shelley uses the travelers tale to establish his argument on the idea of fate and explains the complexity of being remembered and how the legacy is left. The form and meter also strengthen his argument by allowing hidden meaning and messages underneath the lines. Shelly uses form, meter, and diction as well as vague imagery to help the reader to understand the argument on fate.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, Sussex, in 1792, the son of a well-to-do landowner. At the age of ten, he was sent to Syon House Academy near London. There he was bullied and often lonely, but there too he acquired an interest in science, especially astronomy and chemistry, and became an avid reader of juvenile thrillers filled with horrors of various kinds. Shelley reacted to the bullying he was subjected to with violent anger and a determination to devote himself to opposing every form of tyranny.
In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, where he encountered more of the same bullying he had been subjected to at Syon House. His outbursts of rage and his inability to fight encouraged the other boys to provoke him. He became known as "Mad Shelley" because of his unconventional behavior. However, he made a number of friends at Eton and embarked on his literary career. His "Gothic" horror novel was published in 1810. In the same year, with his sister, he coauthored a volume of poems, most of them in the Gothic tradition, entitled Original Poetry by Victor [Shelley] and Cazire [Elizabeth Shelley]. It was also in 1810 that Shelley began his short career at Oxford University. And, in addition, he published a second Gothic novel of terror, St. Irvyne, most of which he had written at Eton. A short volume of poems, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, purporting to be edited by a John Fitz-Victor, was also published by Shelley in 1810. A third publication, a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism, brought Shelley's university career to an abrupt end. On March 25, 1811, he was summoned to appear before the master of University College and, when he refused to admit or deny his authorship of the pamphlet, he was immediately expelled.
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem that is usually consisted of an octave and a sestet. Many poets use this form to propose an argument within the octave and reinforce. within the sestet. Although the sonnet is a shorter poem, it can be quite complex because of this. As seen in Ozymandias, Shelley jams complex language into the already irregular sonnet form, thus creating layers into the poem. Shelley used this form to place multiple interpretations within the text. Hidden text or hidden messages that can be used to further the depth of that poem. Shelly also plays with the rhyme scheme, starting off with a basic scheme of ABAB however it shifts toward lines 5 through 8, switching to a rhyme scheme of ACDC and even so EDEF in lines 9 through 12. But the ending is quite remarkable because it is a simple couplet of EF. The form of this poem ends with a sense of longing and proposes further question by both the speaker and the reader. By having this irregular form, it shows the dilemma and the complexity of fate. It adds to the author's argument of not being able to escape the fate of death and the loss of legacy.Shelley loved to write really long sentences, and this poem is no exception. The second complete sentence, which begins in line 3, is a good example. The sentence has a lot of separate clauses that resemble complicated Latin sentences from two thousand years ago. The main clause is the statement that a "shatter'd visage" lies in the sand near the legs; the rest of the sentence – you know all that stuff about the "frown" and "sneer of cold command" and how the sculptor was so good that the passions have outlived both Ramses and the artist – is all extraneous information that merely adds to or supplements the first assertion. This long, central sentence gives the poem an epic feel, even within the confines of a decidedly un-epic poetic form, the fourteen-line sonnet. Shelley always had grand ambitions.
The final five lines mock the inscription hammered into the pedestal of the statue. The original inscription read “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.” The idea was that he was too powerful for even the common king to relate to him; even a mighty king should despair at matching his power. That principle may well remain valid, but it is undercut by the plain fact that even an empire is a human creation that will one day pass away. The statue and surrounding desert constitute a metaphor for invented power in the face of natural power. By Shelley’s time, nothing remains but a shattered bust, eroded “visage,” and “trunkless legs” surrounded with “nothing” but “level sands” that “stretch far away.” Shelley thus points out human mortality and the fate of artificial things.
The power of one’s reign is often measured by the accomplishments reached during their leadership. However, one’s power could also be measured by the influence they have even after their reign is over. The subject of the poem is Ozymandias, Ramses II, the great ruler of ancient egypt. Ramses was a tyrannical ruler and often quoted as the most power egyptian rulers whom had great control of the area and trade routes around him. Ozymandias, his name in greek not only introduces the subject within the poem but the perspective of the traveler. It shows that from an outside perspective the pharaoh may have been known to foreign lands a time ago but he is nothing more than an outsider and a distant memory discovered in the sands. Lines 7 and 12 explain both these concepts. Within line 7, “Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,”, The image and the history of Ramses survives, even if it isn’t flesh and bone, the role that he had on the civilization and the land around him is still significant. Line 12 “ Of the colossal wreck boundless and bare”. His memory can only be seen in the silence of the desert. It raises the argument of how one would be remembered and how one’s legacy can just turn to ash like all the things around him.
The setting of the desert also has significance, because of the constant state of change it is in. The winds and the constantly moving sand portray the ever changing motion of time and history. By the statute itself being covered in sand as put in Line 4, it shows how events and ideas will always come to unsettle a legacy. It will come to push a legacy out of the way and form a new one. In lines, , It then compares the village that was once besides to the now high sands. This poem has several settings. It begins with a strange encounter between the speaker and a traveler from an "antique land" (1). We have no idea where this rendezvous takes place, which is very weird. It could be in the speaker's head, in a dream, on the street, or in the desert; it sort of resembles something that might occur in a youth hostel or a tavern in London. The first appearance of Aragorn in the Fellowship of the Ring might be a good comparison.
Shortly after this
initial meeting we are whisked away to the sands of Egypt, or a barren desert that closely resembles it. And this desert isn't just barren; it's really barren. Other than the legs, pedestal, and head of the statue, there's only sand. No trace remains of the civilization or culture that spawned the statue. It's a lot like something you'd see in Planet Earth: emptiness all around, a few sand-storms here, and that's about it. It reminds us of movies where people are stranded in the desert and eventually find a little oasis or the occasional tree, except that here we find a partially destroyed statue instead of a little pond.