Analysis of "Ozymandias"

It is a sonnet written by Shelley in iambic pentameters. It is composed of fourteen lines, an octave and a sestet.

At the beginning there is a meeting between the speaking voice ( third person narrator)  and a traveller  who tells  his story in direct speech.

The traveller comes from to an old land where he has seen  an old, broken statue.

He has found two legs of stone and then  a shatteredface. Even if the statue is broken and damaged it is still possible to see  the  passions of the person the statue celebrates:  "frown and wrinkled lip" or" sneer of cold command".

The pieces of body speak thus revealing the pharaoh's personality,. It conveys the picture of a patronizing figure.

The meaning of the scene is to reveal that the statue shows the vanity of all powers. because all things and people are similar in front of  time: time takes over all things.  Death is the same for everybody, for the poor slave as well as for the richest pharaoh.

Power does not last forever and so does the pharaoh and Ozymandias.

The sculpture is a way to givehim  immortality. Thanks to the statue the image of pharaohs will live forever, but also the statue is damaged and ths implies that nothing lasts forever.

In the text there is an alliteration of sound "c" it conveys the strong sound of power and command!

The repetition of the sound " s" is a way to recall silence, the writer wants  the reader to image the silent land of ancient power

There are also a lot of archaisms, to give the idea of being  in another world, far from our ordinary lives, for example the words "antique" and "vast" come from  Latin and the word "visage" comes from French. The choice of such words is a means to add the idea of majesty.

The poet uses the image of an old and far land to give to the reader the  image of a place where power is kept with strength and subjection without making immediate reference to his contemporary present. He cannot describe the society where he lives, so he uses the sonnet to draw the reader's attention to the problem's of his society that are the same of the pharaoh's time: one were leaders abuse of power.