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EInfante - Ozymandias - Denotative Analysis
by 2010-02-05)
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Ozymandias - Denotative analysis
When I started reading the poem, right from the title, I did not understand, what does it refers to. Who or what is "Ozymandias"?
I read the poem, curious to find out the answer.
- ¶ In the first part of the poem, the speaking voice tells us that he or she had met a traveller, who comes from an old land. He or she had a dialogue with him. He said he had saw two large and trunkless legs of stone, in the desert. The reader realizes that the legs belong to a broken statue. The traveller adds that he had saw a ruined face near them. Although it is shattered, the observer could see and feel the face's expressions: the frowning look, the wrinkled lips and the grimace of a person who gives commands with coldness, are all elements that underline the sculptor's skill. The sculptor could capture feelings, "passions", and let them survive by the creation of the statue. Feelings are impressed in the statue, because every watcher could perceive them. Passions, emotions, feelings are "stamped on these lifeless things": they are in the large piece of stone, something immaterial, but that could let observers feel emotions. "The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed"à the poet wants to say that the sculptor, creating the statue, was pulling someone's leg, reproducing accurately his face's expressions; he (the sculptor) could do that only by his heart that let him feel the same emotions he had represented in the statue. Observer's heart let passions and emotions survive, therefore it is as a fodder that let them grow.
- ¶ In the second part of the text, the narrator voice tells us that the traveller saw on the pedestal of the statue some words. Readers understand who is Ozymandias: the statue represents him. He is a king and invites observers, by his words impressed in the rock, to look at his works. Nothing keeps on remaining; all around there is the decay of that enormous statue, infinite and naked. The sands are far away from the rests of the statue.