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Thesis and analysis of ozymandias by percy bysshe shelley
Percy shelley's ozymandias essay
Philosophy of Shelley in Ozymandias
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The Petrarchan sonnets “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” by John Milton both consider a man’s legacy after death. However, both poems talk about a man’s legacy from very different perspective and come to their own conclusions. In “Ozymandias”, a traveler describes a broken statue of King Ozymandias (the Greek name for the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II) and the barren ruins surrounding the statue. Ozymandias believes that his legacy will last forever. Through the sonnet, Shelley implies that legacies are transient and even the most powerful of men fall in the face of time. “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” is about the internal reflection of the speaker on his legacy as he worries whether or not God would approve of it. The poem comes to the conclusion that a man does not need to have an impressive legacy to be a good servant to God. They need only be willing to serve God to make him happy. Clearly these poems, while both contemplating a man’s legacy, show different ways of how a man can feel about his legacy (arrogance or anxiety). However in the end both poems conclude that a legacy, in the end, is of little importance.
Both poems show two different ways that someone can think about their legacy. In Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, Ozymandias is arrogant about his legacy assuming that, not only will it last forever, but that it will strike awe into future onlookers. This impression is mainly given by the quotation marks around the inscription on the statue as it implies that these are the words of the Pharaoh. By calling himself the “king of kings” (Shelley, 10) you get a sense of his enormous pride because being the king of kings is as high as you can go on the social hierarchy scale. Hi...
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...tion until God needs them. Milton comes to the conclusion that God does not care whether you come to him with a legacy or not. He only wishes that his servants are willing to serve him.
In conclusion, “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” by John Milton both contemplate the importance of legacy and come to the conclusion that when it’s all said and done, a legacy does not matter. Both use multiple voices and other literary techniques to enhance and highlight their ideas. However, the two sonnets have different reasons for their conclusion. For Shelley, it is because with time a legacy fades to nothing, Milton, on the other hand, believes that a legacy is not important to God and therefore is not important to him.
Works Cited
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174016
Pride, in one fashion or another, led both Odysseus and Gilgamesh through their travels. Both rested their respective stories as a wizened king, learned and worn. They both had families, even if one was adopted, they gave great care about. At a point, their pride hurts their families. However they persevered through their stories, though inevitably Gilgamesh failed in his ultimate goal, while Odysseus succeeded in his goals were more simple.
Percy Bysshe Shelley began life in Horsham, Sussex, England as the oldest child out of seven children. Shelley faced much hardship throughout his life for his controversial views and philosophies. Percy's life however got better after he married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his second wife, as they were intellectually equal and both wrote.
... bruised by the poor reception of his poetry. The realizations that we all "must die", and that attempts to attain immortality through art are in vain, leave this sonnet with a lasting and overriding sense of despair.
"Ozymandias" written by Percy Shelley, represents the psychological forces of the id as well as the superego, as a charceter in a poem, and as a poetic work. In the poem we encounter a traveler. He brings a message from the desert. There is a statue that exists alone among the rocks and sand. Stamped on the pedestal of that statue are these words, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
The Ozymandias that is described and talked about in the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley is actually based on an actual Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses the second. Ramses the second translates to Ozymandias in Greek. Ozymandias ruled Egypt during the thirteenth century B.C. Ozymandias, or Ramses the second, was known for his ambition and for the giant statues of himself that he ordered to be made. It is one of these statues that is the centerpiece of this poem.
“Ozymandias” is similar to “Viva La Vida” because both the song and poem are about a king who was once hated by his own people. For example, in “Ozymandias”, the traveler speaking to the main character of the poem says, “ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read/ Which yet survive, stamped on [the stone monuments]/ The hand that mocked them”( 7-8), meaning that the sculptor of the king’s monument has ridiculed the king’s passions; the sculptor disapproves of the king and is then considered an enemy of the king. In the song “Viva La Vida”, the singer states, “ Revolutionaries wait/ for my head on a silver plate”( 7, 1-2), which means that the exiled king is wanted dead from his own previous citizens — this then proves that his citizens are his enemies. Therefore, because the king in “Ozymandias” is mocked and is disapproved by his sculptor, and because the king in “Viva La Vida” is being hunted down by his own people, both the song and poem are considered as similar texts.
Just as readers glance at “Perfection Wasted” by John Updike, the poem promises instant and provident satisfaction. Throughout the poem readers experience a dianoetic frequence fittingly established by Mr. Updike. Ideas are affluent from beginning to the prudent end. As a sonnet, the idioms are attentively expressed and developed. The sonnet is methodically balanced with literal and figurative lines. The poet profoundly describes our irreplaceable attainments and triumphs that disappear with a human’s death. Mr. Updike is limning the sudden vanish and dematerialization of an entire life’s section within seconds.
Percy Bysshe Shelley died before seeing how influential and glorified his work would become. Shelley lived during the late 18th and early 19th century, during the industrial revolution. Seeing the evolving world, Shelley wrote for nothing more than to deliver urgent messages concerning humanity, humanity’s future, and who the powers at be should be. Shelley didn’t see the glory he deserved during his lifetime because his radical views of anti-tyranny were expressed in his poetry, driving them to underground distribution, but after his death he inspired countless other literary artists including including Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and Upton Sinclair and became regarded as a major romantic poet. Shelley exchanged his ideas with a group of visionary
Death in “Ozymandias” is both an ancient and physical one, and a metaphorical one. In “Darkness,” death is brutal, agonizing, violent, and touching. In “Darkness,” Byron writes, “All the earth was but one thought – and that was death,” (Byron, Line 42). In this poem, everything dies, beginning with the sun and ending with the moon. Death is achieved through killing when the humans kill the animals for food, and through dying, which happens when the humans fail to stay warm. In “Ozymandias,” Shelley uses the crumbling statue of an Egyptian king as a metaphor for the shortness of life. The poem also points out the death of the king’s ego by directly contrasting the king’s command to “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” with the fact that his statue and his works have crumbled into the desert sands (Shelley, Line 11). Although it is not a death (because the statue was never living), it is important to note how Shelley describes the statue as “lifeless” and that what survives of it is not a symbol of Ozymandias’s great power, but a more negative portrayal of him thorough his “frown / [a]nd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” and that it is the talent and artistic power of the sculptor which lives on (Shelley, Lines 4-5). In short, in the poems, “Darkness” and “Ozymandias,” the overarching theme of destruction is further emphasized by the use of different ideas about different
...the fleeting innate qualities of human beings and their world that they have constructed, giving way to the idea that mortals should live their lives as honorably as possible, so that they will be remembered by their future generations. The impermanence of the human form and its creations is heavily referred to as neither can survive throughout time, however, their words and deeds can live on through stories. The mere existence of this poem can attest to this idea.
In Homer’s The Iliad, talk of fate is frequent and influential. While only some characters know what is fated for them, all acknowledge that their destiny has already been laid out for them. Despite the psychological and emotional effects the accepted idea of fate had on the characters, they continue to engage in the bloody ten-year battle. Homer evokes this motivation in the characters to keep supporting the war despite little incentive, through the significance of glory and its relation to fate as an ultimate end rather than a governing force. This leads to the Iliad’s own message on fate being based on a warrior’s form of death and legacy rather than a fixed way of life. The Iliad further poses the question of whether the actions of the mortals seen throughout the text was free-will or pre-determined. While fate is treated by the gods as an unchangeable power, it is referred to ambiguously and gives the reader an open view on fate, leaving the reader to decide whether the often referred to, “will of Zeus,” is the absolute truth for the humans. These gods and goddesses seen in The Iliad are said to act upon in fate when evidence shows their intervention causing actual altering of the characters own free will. Thus, the gods become the direct cause for the demise of many warriors with a serious significance being placed on an honorable and glorified death. Leaving fate as something rather engineered by the gods themselves.
Although I understand Shakespeare’s sonnet, and it does relate to me, I interpret his view of death in a different manner. In truth, death is inevitable, but I don’t wish to be consumed by the idea of it. Only through ever changing time can we create a deeper understanding of the world in which we live, and develop strength and compassion within ourselves and one another.
The search for immortality is not an uncommon one in literature. Many authors and poets find contentment within the ideals of faith and divinity; others, such as Whitman and Stevens, achieve satisfaction with the concept of the immortality of mortality. This understanding of the cycle of death and rebirth dominates both Walt Whitman's "On the Beach at Night" and Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning" and demonstrates the poets' philosophies of worldly immortality.
“Such ‘unnatural’ tendencies have an intimate relation to genius, and what we call ‘genius’ is, exactly, the awareness, and expression, of planes, or dimensions, beyond the biological and the temporal. That is why Shakespeare’s Sonnets are so deeply concerned with the problems of time, death and eternity” (Knight, 69-70). Maybe Shakespeare knew that true literary genius existed in the study of the relationship man has with death and certainty, so he pointed his writing in this direction for literary immortality. Maybe yet he was simply fascinated with death in general, and his genius shined through in his writing. Regardless of his motives, it is clear that Shakespeare was at some level fascinated with time and its overwhelming destructive powers. This fascination was evident in almost all of Shakespeare’s works, but most notably in his Sonnets. Not only did Shakespeare realize the fragility of life, but he found a way to overcome the universe’s inevitability with poetry. Although most of Shakespeare’s Sonnets are dedicated to a certain young youth, this dedication is only a front to carry on one of Shakespeare’s greatest concerns; the certainty of time and death. With the use of the written word, Shakespeare found a way to overcome the power of time and immortalize all that he loved, whomever and whatever that may be, inside the power of his ink.
No poem of John Donne's is more widely read or more directly associated with Donne than the tenth of the Holy Sonnets,"Death, be not proud." Donne's reputation as a morbid preacher was well-known. He had a portrait of himself made while posed in a winding-sheet so that he could contemplate a personalized memento of death. Donne draws upon a popular subject in medieval and Renaissance art, Le roi mort or King Death. His fascination with death reaches another plateau with this poem. He almost welcomes it and denounces the process as being neither horrifying nor the "end-all be-all." In a contextual point of view, he works to rupture habitual thinking and bring attention to the intensity and depth of a situation by creating doubt or offering a new aspect of his subject. Donne takes this poem and pours forth an array of visions that directly connects to the contextualist in a look at death, the pa...