Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" is about a ruined statue of a powerful ruler who once controlled an ancient kingdom. Browning depicts that Ozymandias was a very harsh ruler - this is shown by the quote, “His sneer of cold command”, his “sneer” shows that Ozymandias somewhat abused his power because he was cruel leader; this leads the reader on to think that King Ozymandias was most liely a dictator in his ancient kingdom. “Cold command” is an example of harsh alliteration, the strong repetition of the letter ‘c’ at the start of both words once again gives a representation of power, “command” also represents the dictatorship of pharaos kingdom and the use of the word “cold” may show that by being a dictator and abusing power this can
Thus we can see that his arrogance and ego reached such a level that he thought of himself as god and forgot that he was a mere mortal. His disdainful challenge to the mighty of the world, allude to his excessive arrogance and pride. This bottomless pit of pride, arrogance, haughtiness and self-consuming narcissism is so apparent that it has been used by many an author as a metaphor when comparing and analyzing characters as illustrated by Allison (2012: 106) for the character of “Daniel Dillion” in “The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom”. The poet uses this juxtaposition in order to add vividness and to enhance the contrast
Macbeth simply just let his ambition blind him. Ozymandias has the same mindset with that feeling of insuperability. “Look on my works ye, might and despair” (Ozymandias 11). This quote demonstrated the foolish arrogance of Ozymandias, and also holds some irony because everything around the statue or the so called “works” is in ruins. He wants everyone to know what he has done to show what a powerful man
His efforts of being remembered forever now lie in a pile of stone amid a vast dessert of nothingness. He might have been a force to reckon with in his day but all his ambitions have now been buried with him. On the site www.shmoop.com, the reviewer states that when Ozymandias says “look on my works ye mighty and despair” he could be warning other leaders not to get their hopes up too high as their statues, works or political regimes will eventually be destroyed or fade away, with nothing to recall them but a dilapidated statue half buried in sand. 3. “The hand that mocked them and the heart that
His pent - up rage is expressed again in the final stanza “ Hands burn for a stone, a bomb to shiver down the glass”. This shows the frustration of the place and, possibly, the loss of solidarity, the fears among his people. Afrika.s sense of injustice is powerfully highlighted with the effective imagery of the “purple flowering amiable weeds” and the nefarious “crushed white ice; the single rose” which he turns into symbol of white oppression. The ending is stark and poignant as he feels those old feelings of oppression as his hands burn for a bomb to “shiver down the glass”.
His left foot is the clay element which he leans on. The weight on only the clay foot symbolizes how when the clay crumbles, so will the human race. It will not last long and must try to get back to when humanity was good. The statue cries because of this decline and the tears roll down his body into Hell. The tears create the rivers Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus.
Therefore, Golding explores the fragility of order in a society under stress. He also expresses this through constantly referring to the conch as fragile such as in the line ‘the fragile white conch’, emphasizing that civility can be lost any moment. This is also shown when the conch smashes to pieces, now representing broken civility and chaos. At this point, Piggy also dies. ‘Piggy was dead and the conch smashed to powder’ enforces that Piggy represented the need for science and intellectual endeavour in society so the break of both of these symbols at the same time shows a sudden corruption of civilisation.
Neither does Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion). The unmentionable evil at the centre of our culture, according to him, is religion. Faith is one of the greatest evils of the world comparable to the small pox, he says, but harder to eradicate. He writes, “From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.” Dawkins has even gone to the extent of saying that forcing religion into a child is a form of child abuse. Daniel Dennett (philosopher and cognitive scientist) likens religion to cancer – it grows and is destructive.
Passage Analysis Page 26-27 This passage is primarily concerned with the lost hopes and illusions of the American Dream that dwell within the uninterrupted desolation that is the Valley of Ashes. Referencing the monstrous eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg and the aggressive and possessive nature of Tom Buchanan, Fitzgerald contrasts the grim wasteland and poverty of the Valley of Ashes, to the hedonism of the Eggs, and of New York City. The Valley of Ashes is a desolate wasteland, symbolic of the moral decay hidden behind the beautiful facades of the Eggs, and suggests that under the embellishment of West Egg and the mannered charm of East Egg, lies the same ugliness found in the Valley. “The motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land.” The inclusion of the railroad symbolises progress; a pathway out of the dump that is the Valley of Ashes, and the longing for wealth and class by those who wish to “shrink away” from the reality which they cannot and do not want to accept. But these lower class patrons are left to “stare at the dismal scene” of the Valley of Ashes, on “waiting trains” demonstrating not only their failure in trying to grasp the American Dream, but the reality in which they can’t escape.
We may go round our history books either lambasting or extolling powerful leaders, but we will always come to the conclusion that power does corrupt a man. The thirst for power is unbounded and the lamentable consequences often quash a man. Getting power is just the onset of melancholy, disaster, lugubriousness and sorrow. All the leaders throughout history were undoubtedly very strong and were feared but we often learn that they were sordid, uncouth, perpetrators, lascivious, perplexed and unscrupulous. They often committed a myriad of staggering sins and believed they were masters of perpetuity.