Ozymandias: An Analysis

Since I first read it as part of my Subject Knowledge Enhancement course prior to the start of my ITT, Shelley's Ozymandias has been one of my favourite poems. In part, this is attributable to the fact that it is featured in Breaking Bad (one of my favourite TV shows) but fundamentally - full disclosure - it is because I have a curious fascination with the transience of power and, simply, Shelley's sonnet explores this notion beautifully. 

I haven't had the opportunity to teach this poem yet and so, before I do, I wanted to write down some ideas that I could maybe refer to or use at a later date. It's also, I feel, a good way of refreshing or even adding to my subject knowledge.

I should say that this is my first time attempting anything this detailed and I expect there will be things I have overlooked or perhaps not got quite right. I haven't touched upon context or anything like that but I hope what I have covered is useful in some way. 

Without further ado, then, let us begin: 

Line 1: I met a traveller from an antique land

• The poem opens with an anonymous, first person narrative voice ('I') whose primary function is to act as a sort of framing device through which we hear / observe the story that follows
• The 'I' then fades into the background and the floor is opened up to the also-anonymous 'traveller', who steps forward to recount the tale of what he has seen
• In shifting the voice of the poem from 'I' to the 'traveller', Shelley immediately establishes a layered structure: we are hearing the story second-hand
• This opening line, then, is quite significant and there are, I think, two things that can be said about it:
• the distance created by the layered structure serves to undermine the authority of the king whilst simultaneously reinforcing the power of time ('antique' is suggestive of something ancient or a deep connection to the past)
• this distance also affords Shelley the opportunity to implicitly criticise the pursuit of power and the nature of tyrannical regimes: after all, it is the 'traveller from an antique land' who shares the story of the megalomaniacal Ozymandias. At the time of the poem's composition, the French emperor Napoleon was a prisoner on the island of St Helena and it has been suggested that Shelley used it as a vehicle to convey a point about his downfall

Lines 2-3: Who said -- "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert . . . . Near them, on the sand,

• The legs are 'vast' which of course is a literal reference to the size and scale of the statue but also offers the reader an insight into the power and dominance of the figure who commissioned it
• This sense of power is then subverted by the fact that they are 'trunkless'. If we consider the idea that the torso is where the majority of the vital, life-giving organs are situated, the absence of a 'trunk' is symbolically rich and may well be connected with death: not simply the death of Ozymandias the person but with it, the death of his power also. 
• That these 'vast' legs remain upright perhaps highlights, in part, the stability and control which the subject of the statue enjoyed in life: stability and control which is reflected by the meter of these lines. For example, the word 'stand' at the beginning of line 3 is stressed and that stress, I think, emphasises the solidity of the legs and the person they belonged to
• The poetic devices in these lines are also interesting as Shelley makes use of enjambment and caesura for almost contrasting effect. Just as the legs of the statue have stretched across time, perhaps reflecting Ozymandias's legacy, so too does the enjambment function to stretch the description of the legs across lines. The caesura, on the other hand, breaks the line apart in the same way that nature and the passage of time has broken the statue apart, with the ellipsis mirroring the distance between the 'vast and trunkless legs' and the 'shattered visage' of the next line

Lines 4-5: Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

• It is interesting that the face of the statue is 'half sunk'. This may (or may not!) be a comment on how long it takes to erase the legacy of a despotic ruler or how those with power desperately strive to maintain it even after they have lost, or start to lose, it: despite thousands of years lapsing, a section of the king's face is still visible and still presiding over his surroundings, the territory of his once-mighty empire, almost as though he refuses to relinquish his grip over it
• Though the face is 'shattered' - again, the power of nature and time is evident here as both forces have combined to cause this destruction - enough remains to provide an indication of what Ozymandias was like. The statue wears a 'frown', a 'wrinkled lip' and a 'sneer of cold command'. Prof. John McCrae opines that when you put these elements together, there is a fragmentation that starts to resemble a Picasso painting, which is an image I quite like. I certainly think that the features which remain visible are sufficient for us to infer that Ozymandias was a king who considered his subjects beneath him: 'sneer' and 'wrinked lip' are both evocative of contempt, scorn and even disgust

Lines 6-7: Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things

• This line marks another shift and the introduction of a third 'character' to sit alongside the 'I' and the 'traveller' from the opening line: the sculptor
• The facial expressions of the previous line attest to the skill of the sculptor, who has not merely created a depiction of the king but has almost intuitively 'read' the 'passions' (i.e. the desire to impose himself) of Ozymandias 'well' and then transferred those implicit 'passions' onto a physical, tangible object with such precision that others, like the 'traveller' and, by extension, us as the reader, are able to discern what Ozymandias was like
• Through this image, Shelley celebrates art as a medium capable of enduring in a way that political or military power does not: Ozymandias and his empire have long disappeared and yet, because of the sculptor, he has been able to 'survive'. In that respect, Ozymandias has achieved a sense of immortality not necessarily because of the power he wielded or what he achieved in life but rather because of the sculptor and his adroit ability to breathe life into 'these lifeless things' 

Lines 8-9: The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; / And on the pedestal these words appear:

• This line is ambiguous - Prof. John McCrae suggests that it is grammatically fragmented and therefore open to interpretation. I think it could be quite interesting to have a discussion with a class around this line and let them form their own ideas about whether they think Shelley is describing the sculptor or Ozymandias himself
• My own interpretation is that 'the hand' refers to the sculptor. That being the case, the word 'mocked' takes on a double meaning: 'mock' as in to replicate or imitate something and 'mock' as in to ridicule. As such, he is not only creating an accurate likeness of Ozymandias but, in doing so, is also taunting him for his cruelty
• The 'heart that fed' is more difficult to pin down - this could be the 'heart that fed' Ozymandias's 'passions' but then could also be the sculptor's 'heart' feeding his hand as he crafts this statue. Either way, as alluded to previously, it is through art and art alone that Ozymandias has been able to 'survive' 
• What follows this ambiguity is the introduction of something much more solid and wholly unambiguous: the infamous pedestal with the vainglorious inscription

Lines 10-11: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

• There is yet another shift: this time, the character and prevailing voice of the poem becomes Ozymandias himself, speaking from beyond the grave
• The wording of the inscription seems to have been paraphrased from the version that appears in Diodorus's Bibliotheca Historica ('I am Osymandyas, king of kings. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass any of my works'). Interestingly, Parr (1957) notes in this essay that the epitaph 'was apparently not on the remains of the statue in Shelley's day' but even if it had been, nobody would have known what it said because it was not until 1822 - the year of Shelley's death - that Jean-Francois Champollion unlocked the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics
• The inscription is hubristic to the extreme and also illustrates the king's naivety: he seems to believe that his 'works' (his empire) will exist in perpetuity. He has, quite literally, put himself on a 'pedestal' above other kings but, more importantly, the forces of nature and time

Lines 12-13: Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

• In these lines we appear to shift back to the 'traveller' who began the tale and, in a game of poetic bowling, Shelley sets Ozymandias up to really knock him down: immediately following the vanity and egotism of the inscription is the devastatingly simple, declarative sentence 'nothing beside remains'. With these three words, any lingering sense of awe / wonderment / fear / dread that Ozymandias sought to evoke dissipates entirely (and rapidly), replaced by a feeling of... pity? Isolation? Loneliness? Insignificance? The list goes on
• Shelley employs caesura with the full stop after 'remains'. This forces us to pause, even briefly, before continuing, and silently reflect on and marvel at the power of nature and the relentless march of time. Perhaps at this point we might even start to contemplate our own existence / position in the world
• It is also notable that lines 12 and 13 are both enjambed: a subtle but clever accompaniment to the image of the sprawling desert stretching far off into the distance
• I am not usually one for commenting on alliteration but I do think that it is used to good effect here: the plosive 'b' sounds in 'boundless and bare' reinforce that sense of desolation and emptiness which the 'king of kings' now sits within

Line 14: The lone and level sands stretch far away

• The poem concludes with another alliterative phrase - the 'l' sound, followed by a vowel, elongates the words and reflects the way in which the sands of the desert 'stretch far away', seemingly without end 

If you stuck with it this far, thanks for reading - feedback and suggestions welcome.

Oli