Ozymandias is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem begins with a chance encounter and explores a theme of Universal truth. Ozymandias was a powerful leader who built alot of buildings in ancient Egypt and because of this he earned the nickname of "the builder". He was extremely arrogant and looked down on everyone else. His arrogance and unbelievable self-belief is the main topic in this poem.
Ozymandias had a statue of himself built. On the pedestal the words "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works ye mighty and despair!" were engraved. This phrase was written in present tense and suggests that this man thought his work and achievements would last forever. This is a very arrogant thing to say and he also tells people to "look down" on his work and "despair". Now all that is left of his efforts is a broken statue.
All his buildings have been destroyed or just rotted away to nothing and this makes his taunt ironic. Anyone who reads that now can just laugh because in the end he was no better than anyone he mocked.
The rhyme scheme of this poem is split in three voices. The poet is simply the narrator and says that he heard the story of Ozymandias from the second voice which is the traveller. To have travelled to a foreign land in 1817 he would have had to have been a very wealthy and educated man. This adds authenticity to the story because an educated man is likely to be more reliable than an ordinary person. The third voice is Ozymandias himself. His words show his arrogance when he says "My name is" this is a claim of immortality.
Word-choice is important in this poem because each word has meaning behind...