Ozymandias - Analysis

Ozymandias is a poem written by Shelley. It is a sonnet, composed of fourteen lines, as the Petrarchian model. They are divided into an octave and a sestet.

The poet does not soon reveal readers who is Ozymandias, because he wants to persuade them to find out, reading the poem.

¶ The octave introduces characters to readers: they can understand there is a narrating     voice à ("I") and another character, a traveller, who had a dialogue with him.

In the first line the speaking voice tell us he had met a traveller, who comes from an old, far land. The fact could let readers think that he is going to let them learn something unknown; maybe he will talk about something that we have never seen.

 I suppose that it is another mean the poet uses to let readers be curious about what he had written.

After the meeting between the narrator voice and the traveller, readers can see in the text the typical punctuation that introduces a direct speech à( : "..." ) .

The traveller said that he saw  two large and trunk less legs of stone, in the desert.  Readers realize that the legs belong to a broken statue.

The traveller adds that near them there was a ruined face, half covered by the sand.

Even though it was covered, the traveller could see the face's expressions:  the frowning look, the wrinkled lips and the grimace of a person who was used to give commands with coldness and seriousness. They are elements that underline the sculptor's skill: he could capture feelings, "passions" and let them survive by the creation of the statue. Feelings are impressed in the statue, because every possible observer could perceive them.

Passions, feelings, emotions are "stamped on these lifeless things": they are in the enormous piece of stone, something immaterial, but that could let watchers feel emotions, the same emotions that the sculptor wanted to render in his work.

I  make the hypothesis  that one of the aim of the poet is the one to highlight the sculptor's skill, but in an anonymous way.(otherwise he would have written the sculptor's name and he would have celebrated him without circumlocutions).

"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, Ozymandias, reproducing accurately his facial expressions. He could do that only by his heart that let him feel the same emotions he had represented in the statue, and the same ones humans could feel.

Observer's heart let passions and emotions survive, therefore it is as a fodder that let them grow.

¶ in the sestet the speaking voice tell us that traveller saw some words, on the pedestal of the statue. At last readers understand who Ozymandias is: he is a Pharaoh .....

He invites observers, just as the traveller who was in front of him, to look at his works, and to despair, because he is a strong, powerful man.

The narrator writes his own message to comment on Ozymandias' s words: "nothing beside remains"à everything is destined to end, nothing last forever, not even if you are such a powerful person as the Pharaoh Ozymandias. His power is fell into decline.

All around only some pieces of rock, nothing more: a boundless and a bare scenery, la stretch of sands lonely and far away.