These notes come from myself, who passed matric of 2023 with an overall average of 87% in each subject i took.
A detailed summary of the poem "Ozyamandias" for the IEB English exam
- Comment on the omnipotence (agency/ force of unlimited power) and power of time.
- Ozymandias was a tyrant yet his absolute and supreme power and autocratic rule could not survive
time.
- Shelley was a Romantic and idealised values such as liberty/ fraternity/ equality and the power of good
and evil. He highlights these concepts in the poem by indicating that corrupt power and tyranny cannot
last.
- Comment on power of art to endure: Even though the poem is fragment, just like the statue it describes,
the fact that it is being read means it survives. Where all else fails, art endures and preserves.
Structure:
- Follows mostly the Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef gg) but has no rhyming
couplet.
- Structure (organization of lines into stanzas) follows mostly Petrarchan sonnet (octave and sestet)
- Octave: focuses on the statue
- Sestet: focuses on the pedestal and surroundings
- So the poem invokes two forms but breaks both types by refusing to follow full conventions.
- This “breaking” of poetic convention may be read as an echo of the broken work of art (the statue) that
Ozymandias describes.
Rhyme Scheme:
- ABAB ACDC EDE FEF
- The changes to the traditional rhyme scheme heighten the similarity between poem and statue:
○ Both are works of art that appear to be broken and missing pieces, but both endure, despite the
passing of time.
Caesura & Enjambment:
Imagery/ Figures of Speech:
- Sibilance (repetition of ‘s’ sound throughout group of words): harsh, hissing sound – emphasises the
power and brutality or Ozymandias
- Diction: emphasises power (of Ozymandias and nature) but also brutality (inhuman behaviour,
arrogance, hubris)
- Metaphor of statue
○ Represents the might of human political institutions like Ozymandias’ empire – corrupt, absolute
power.
○ Symbolise the power of art – through the sculptor’s skill, the statue captures and preserves the
“passions” of its subject.
○ Even symbolising the way art of can have power beyond the intention of those who commission
it – while Ozymandias saw the statue as a wat to capture his power and magnificence – the poem
suggests the statue also serves to mock him.
○ Represents the speaker’s hope and belief that tyranny will always crumble (as Ozymandias was a
tyrant and his statue become a “wreck”)
Ozymandias Of Egypt - visited sarcophagus (a stone coffin) in British museum and inspired to write the poem
Title: 'Ozy' - (Gr.) for 'air' / 'to breath' 'Mandias' (Gr.) 'to rule'
Ozymandias: ruler to air/nothing - Based on Ramses II
English Page 1
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