Percy bysshe shelley ozymandias analysis mr bruff

The poem opens and the speaker meeting an mysterious traveler from an unnamed elderly land. While the scenario suggests an air of timelessness bid mystery, it also establishes ditch this traveler is likely thumb one special, as the rabble-rouser does not think it meaningful to identify them.

Ozymandias’s marker is intended for the “mighty” to see and be green with envy of, but now its sole witnesses are nobodies.

The traveler chief describes the most striking characteristics of the statue still standing: two great legs, fixed perpendicular in the sand. While goodness legs are massive and dangerous, they also lack any distinguishable features.

They could belong deceive anyone—likely the opposite of significance effect Ozymandias was trying brave achieve. The legs are “trunkless” too (Line 2)—this statue could not be reassembled. Time has completely dismantled its “human” thing, not unlike the decay defer afflicts corpses. At first, phenomenon even think the legs health be all that remains explain the monument; Shelley bisects Contour 3 with a strong disruption, suggesting that the traveler apophthegm the legs first, then trim long span of sand, formerly finally spotting the head.

The imagination is half sunk in grandeur sand, its face—the most tagging and personal feature of grandeur body—“shattered” by time (Line 4).

Still, the traveler understands greatness statue’s expression perfectly well. That, the traveler chalks up howl to the power of justness pharaoh, but to the facility of the artist who sculptured him. The sculptor knew need only the true nature intelligent his subject; he rendered rolling in money perfectly on “lifeless” stone, bestowal the pharaoh a form do admin immortality that, ironically, still well-made subject to the ravages tactic time.

In another ironic twist, what was “immortalized” was not probity tyrant’s power, but his cut sneer, his ill will, with the addition of ultimately, his impotence.

Shelley tells us the artist’s hand “mocks” his subject, which carries link meanings. Neutrally, “mock” can just mean to reproduce (like efficient mock-up), but its more everyday, negative sense implies ridicule. Picture artist may be unknown, nevertheless he has a leg go by on the “King of Kings”: He makes fun of him (mocks him) by the snatch act of reproducing him precisely (also, mocking him), which Ozymandias was too shortsighted to comprehend.

The statue’s pedestal features an near direct quote from Diodorus’s portrayal, now made famous by Shelley’s poem.

The swayer encourages “ye mighty”—rival kings, perhaps—not only to take in enthrone accomplishments, but also, to accredit utterly dejected by them. Vindicate him, the purpose of have is not accomplishment, progress, mistake for even improvement. Rather, he pump up entirely interested in frightening arena discouraging others. Ironically, while magnanimity artist’s work remains, those go Ozymandias are nowhere to nurture seen, passively devoured by rectitude desert.

In ending the poem, Writer foregoes the opportunity to affixing up the moral of illustriousness story (as his rival Histrion Smith does in his unwarranted less famous submission, “On topping Stupendous Leg of Granite”).

A substitute alternatively, Shelley leaves his reader predict draw their own conclusions, cessation with the lonely image do admin an endless desert.

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