Speech: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Shelley Essay

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Q: Discuss the main idea in a poem you have studied and explain how the author conveys that idea.

The sonnet Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is about meeting a traveller “from an antique land” who epitomizes seeing a large, broken statue lying in the middle of the desert. Time is always the victor is the main idea in the poem and is conveyed by creating three strong images, using carefully chosen diction, techniques and a twist.

Shelley begins the poem by telling of a meeting with a “traveller” who tells of “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” in the desert. Shelley uses the adjective “antique” in the first line “I met a traveller from an antique land”. This shows that the land is decrepit and ancient. Shelley uses the adjective “vast” to describe the greatness and enormity of this statue and the adjective “trunkless” tells us that it is without an upper body. This conveys the image of the statue and how time is slowly taking over as now it is but a ruin. “Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command”. The adjective “shattered” describes how the face is wrecked and has possibly crumbled due to old age. Shelley also uses alliteration (“cold”, “command”). Ozymandias was cruel, powerful and arrogant and the two verbs “mocked” and “fed” describe how Ozymandias enjoyed being conceited and arrogant and how he favoured the suffering of his civilisation. Shelley’s carefully chosen diction and effective images tells us of cruelty and sovereignty, and how it restricts people’s lives.

In the second main image Shelley shows us the arrogance of Ozymandias, by putting the voice of the ruler into the text. His arrogance and conceitedness are placed onto a pedestal which reads…
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Shelley uses repetition “king of kings” to emphasise Ozymandias’ contemptuousness and how he thinks he is immortal. The use of imperative “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair” has really projected the command from Ozymandias, telling the other nobles and rulers to give up as they have no chance of matching his works. Shelley explains effectively how Ozymandias was mercilessness
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