The inscription on the pedestal of Ozymandias’s statue read, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
The fact that he called himself the “King of Kings” suggests that Ozymanidas was very powerful and also perhaps rather proud and arrogant. Ozymandias is the Greek name for Rameses II, an Egyptian pharaoh who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE. We know that Rameses II was indeed very powerful. He won many military campaigns and made Egypt a powerful and wealthy nation. The inscription, however, implies that being very powerful was not enough for Ozymandias. He wanted to be, and seemed certain that he was, the most powerful.
The second part of the inscription is phrased as a demand. He wants people, and specifically other powerful or “Mighty” people, to look upon what he has achieved and despair. He wants these other people to lose any hope of being more powerful than him and to be overawed by his power. It’s also possible that “ye Mighty” is a reference to the gods, which would make Ozymandias’s declaration of power even more arrogant. The exclamation mark at the end of the demand suggests an insistent, fierce tone. Ozymandias likely did not tolerate anybody who refused to acknowledge his power or to treat him accordingly.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
What does the inscription on the pedestal suggest about the kind of person Ozymandias was?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment