An in-depth line-by-line (and further!!) analysis of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. These notes helped me get 96% for English in my matric finals and I have no doubt that they'll help you too.
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Percy Shelley: atheist
Poet drowned when boat sank. Outspoken proponent of non=violent opposition to authority
Romantics [idealised world]
1.I met a traveller from an antique land
2.Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone -Literally, traveller describes decayed state of statue he
encountered
-Symbolically, ruined statue represents both fate of
Pharoah +his empire, on large scale, fate of all despots whose
hubris blinds them to their own mortality+fallibility
Describes the limbs as huge +strong
-> strength+size of Egyptian empire under Pharoah’s rule
Adjective vast: juxtaposed with adjective ‘trunkless’- suggests
statue missing torso. Without bd- statue rendered useless
Suggest: statue represents an empire +power that has long
since collapsed.
Irony: statue erected as symbol of power but bcm
representation of folly believing himself to once be invincible
Repetition of s sound: sibilance. Hissing quality, Shifting sands
of desert:Drawn out sound- desert sands, Brutal image-
shattered statue, body fallen off
3.Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Literal description of condition
symbolise state of empire of Ramses II
4.Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
5.And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Intimidating cold facial expression: frown, sneer
-suggests this part symbolises way in which power of empire
was wielded
Cruel, relishes his power, authoritarian,
6.Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, -Praise sculptor for capturing expression of pharoah so
accurately.
7.Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless Read: understood psychology+passions/ true feelings of
things, pharah perfectly
Enjambement- relentlessness of time, timelessness of this
sculptors art
8.The hand that mocked them, and the heart that Synechodoche: hand reference to skilful scultor
fed, Mocked: copied or ridiculed- both accurately representedd
pharoah+subtly undermined beliefs+superiority
-heart[feelings of arrogance and contempt] - belief invincible
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