Critical Appreciation of Shelley’s Ozymandias

“Ozymandias” by P.B. Shelley is a profound commentary on the futility of monarchical power. This sonnet buttresses Shelley’s lifelong tirade against the dictatorial rule and shows us the onslaughts of time. As an ‘unacknowledged legislator of the world’, Shelley thinks it necessary to lay bare the fate of tyrant rulers who, in spite of their desperate attempts to immortalize their names, are reduced to nothingness by the ravages of time. Such has been the case in his “Ozymandias”. Actually, Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramses II, the pharaoh of Egypt with whom Moses fought during the Exodus. For Shelley Ozymandias turns out to be a synecdoche for arrogant rulers.

Here the poet narrates a tale told to him by a traveller who has been from an ‘antique land.’ The phrase ‘antique land’ probably refers to Egypt. The first line contains an element of ambiguity as it suggests that the poet might have come across a traveller by tavelling through time. The entire poem is the narration of the tale that the unknown traveller told. He told the poet that he had seen a huge dilapidated statue standing in the desert. The statue was mostly ruined. What remained were a trunkless legs and a broken face. The broken face was half sunk in the ground. The face, though broken, reflected that person’s pride and anger. The expression ‘sneer of cold command’ reveals the autocratic nature of the Pharaoh. The fact that the sculptor well represented in art the personality of the Pharaoh corroborates that the said person had a vainglorious temperament and contemptuous of common people. The statue continues to survive though both the artist who made (‘mocked’) it and the person whose passions it indicates, are gone. The verb ‘mock’ has been used by Shelley to create a punning effect as it means both imitate and satirize. An undercurrent of irony pervades the line as the poet wants to hint at the fact that the statue, being damaged, remains as a satirical representation of Ozymandias.

On the pedestal on which the broken statue stands are inscribed the following words:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Such a braggadocio speaks volumes for Ozymandias’s desire for attaining permanent glory. The last three lines, which contain the moral of the sonnet, are expressive of the fate of such tyrant rulers in the course of time:

“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Time does not spare anyone; however powerful they may be. Mighty empires fall and great civilisations are reduced to dust by the ravages of time. The sand-image in the last line has been utilised by the poet to suggest death’s final triumph. Harold Bloom opines, ‘This very same sand, commonly used to measure time, has curiously lost that ability in a poem that is ultimately timeless.’ Thus, in this poem Shelley pronounces his message by holding on to one central image of a broken statue.