![]() Like on a rollercoaster, the poem’s narrative imagery reaches its zenith*,* only to drop again as the adage goes: “The higher they stand, the harder they fall.” ![]() The king of kings’ rise and decay is well established by Shelley’s sonnet shortly after the reader’s perception is filled with a brutal strength perpetrated by the emperor’s ego, the whole construction of greatness is unmade by the terrifying calm of the vast desert, which silences Ozymandia’s speech. The fall of the Soviet Union changed modern geopolitics and irreversibly divided Eastern-Western diplomacy. It was dissolved at the end of the Cold War in 1991 due to political and economic problems. ![]() Soviet Union: one of the most fearless empires in the 20th century, it lasted for about 70 years. Its demise combined military defeats, economic problems, and internal unrest.īritish Empire: once the largest in our history, it existed for more than 300 years before it finally plunged in the mid-20th century as a result of decolonization movements and economic problems. Ottoman Empire: known for its longevity, lasted for over impressive 600 years before it collapsed at the end of World War I. Mongol Empire, one of the largest, reigned for about 150 years before it dissolved in the late 14th century due to internal strife and political fragmentation. Its collapse is attributed to many factors, including internal political instability, economic problems, and invasions by barbarian tribes. Roman Empire, one of the most powerful empires in civilized history, lasted for over 500 years before it fell apart in 476 AD. As Ozymandias’ kingdom, all of them have failed. Perhaps it is men’s vile needs to outsmart the trials of time that for so long fed false premises of immaterial eternity and raised empires that were meant to last forever, fueled by delusions of grandeur. Isn’t the very abstractions we create to comfort ourselves when faced with the weight of time the most credible evidence that humans’ ultimate goal is to deny their mortality? Isn’t the legacies we generate, whatever they are, plausible assumptions that we will perdure? If something is left behind, will we live through it, and therefore, will our existence had not been in vain? Suppose we assume that the concept of a soul is nothing more than a product of the mind, being the mind a construct of the biological brain. One can argue that the fear of death is, intrinsically, the founding of every religion or even the reasoning behind the soul. On a psychological level, the instinct to outlive our limited stay in the material world not only speaks about the preservation of life - which is a concept embedded in all life forms-but also reaches out to the metaphysical spectrum of the mind, that will inevitably, in a due moment, reflect on life expectancy and propose itself to, conscious or subconsciously, elaborate theoretical ways to overcome its fragility. However, the speaker highlights the contradiction of the monument’s boastful claim in the traveler’s description, which underscores human mortality in the Manichaeism of a mighty-empire ruin and the bleak desert, which renders Ozymandias pretentiousness insignificant and forgettable.Ī first depth of semantic analysis casts the inherent need for legacy constructions as a defiance against the oblivious nature of time in contrast to human existence. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” 1279–1213 BC), whose ruling is suggested in the text to be built on arrogant premises of becoming everlasting and awe-inspiring, hence the spine-chilling inducing inscription at the statue’s bottom. ![]() The poem begins with the traveler’s encounter with a sunken statue in the desert, almost near-completely consumed by the sands of time, which portrayed the king Ozymandias, a greek name for the pharaoh Ramasses II (r. Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed ![]() The poem explores the theme of human mortality, depicting the descent of an arrogant and non-benevolent ruler and the fleeting nature of all human achievements. “Ozymandias” is a sonnet written by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818 and originally published in the11 January issue of The Examiner of London in the same year it tells the story of a traveler who stumbles upon the ruins of a once-great empire in the desert. ![]()
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