Poetry Key Quotes Analysis

“Vast and trunkless legs of stone”

Power was once great and now is broken

Imagery emphasis the scale and grandeur of the statue despite its ruin

Legs still standing represents the hollow endurance of power

Metaphor ruined statue mirros collapse of Ozymandias’ regin

Juxtaposition  vastness with absence ( trunkless) time erodes human achievements

“Half sunk, a shattered visage lies”

Sibilance soft sinking motion

Metaphor broken legacy and moral decay

Romantic Critique nature is greater

Time has destroyed even the proudest expressions of power

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings”

Biblical Allusion divine authority

Caesura highlights the absurdity and little lasting

Hyperbole exaggerates arrogance and tyranny

Irony boast is contradicted by ruined state of statue

“Stamped on these lifeless things”

Metaphor Violents and force. Rulers desire to impose will on world

Stamp could mean sculptors artistry or ozymandias’ tyranny

Human legacy cannot transcend time

“Colossal, wreck, boundless and bare”

Emphasises isolation and desolation

Oxymoron - colossal wreck human ambition - ruin

plosive alliteration mimics the emptiness

“Lone and level sands stretch far away”

Alliterarion  slow quiet tone

symbolism  sand represents nature eternal power

flat emphasises equality and  contrasts  kingship

Cyclical  nature is eternal and powerfull

“I wander through each chartered street”

Ownership and control of the state

wander - aimlessness and melancholy

“Marks of weakness, marks of woe”

Repetition  repetitive suffering of the poor

alliteration  decay and despair

visibly broken population

“In every infant’s cry of fear”

anaphora universal suffering and despair

juxtaposition  infant and fear - society has destroyed innocence

auditory imagery collective suffering - wail of the city

Pathos  use of child

“Mind-forged manacles I hear”

Metaphor chains psychological imprisonment - minds are enslaved

Alliteration metallic hardness - mental imprisonement

Suffering on all levels

“Black’ning church”

Metaphor church (purity) is being corrupted

religious irony  sin free institution is tainted

Lexical set  of darkness and pain - blood, hapless

“Blights with plague the marriage hearse”

Oxymoron  marriage hearse life and death

metaphor - disease

society that lacks joy

“Merciless iced east winds that knive us”

personification  concious cruel enemy

metaphor  violent physical assualt

Sibilence - sinister cutting of the wind

“Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow”

Oxymoron white snow and black - unnatural

Personification air has fear and movement

nature is deadlier and bulleyts - soldiers efforts are futile

“But nothing happens”

Refrain - endless waiting and mental stagnation

Irony  lack of action contrasted by emotional damage from weathor

Blunt emotionless tone

“Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces”

Personification  silent invading predator

Alliteration cold is everywhere and insecapable

discomfort

“For love of God seems dying”

Religious Imagery loss of faith

contrast with traditionsl war poetry

despair

moral and emotional collapse

“twitching agonies of men among its brambles”

Metaphor  entrapment and natures cruelty

inhuman and indecent treatment

“Probably armed, possibly not”

Ambiguity doubt

Fragmented syntax and colloquial tone show hesitation

haunted by possibilty of killing an innocent person

“I see broad daylight on the other side”

Metaphor - morality and fragility

Juxtaposition - daylight and death

“He's there on the ground, sort of inside out”

Colloquial - distance self to cope

euphemism protect mind

Graphic imagery

too intense to describe and remember

“Tosses his guts back into his body. Then he's carted off in the back of a lorry”

Stripped of dignity

Dehumanised

soldiers act like machines - desensitised

Juxtaposition  of horror and normality

“His blood-shadow stays on the street”

Metaphor symbolises guilt

permanence

sin- macbeth 

“The drink and the drugs won’t flush him out”

Metaphor  militarulanguage - infiltrated mind

Repetition of pronoun  him to symboloise how he is huanted

Addiction 

“There was once a country…”

Fairytale nostalgia and idealisation

Ellipsis any country, uncertainty

“The bright filled paperweight”

Metaphor - memories of homeland, preserved

containemenr trapped and not influenced by the present

“The white streets of that city”

purity and innocence

Idealised vision

childhood perception

“Tanks and the frontiers rise between us”

Personification - power and political oppression

War has caused separation

“It tastes of sunlight”

Synesthesia -  taste and sight - vivid imagery

Metaphor  warmth and joy

sunlight reflects hope and future

"“I comb its hair and love its shining eyes”

Personification initimacy and tenderness, duty to care

Motif  of light

“Embarked at sunrise”

Land of the rising sun - Japan

sunrise - new beginnings

Juxtaposition - light and impending death

“Enough fuel for a one-way journey into history”

Metaphor  suicideand self destruction

Personification  finality of choice, remebered in history

Glory yet unknown

“Strung out like bunting”

Simile nature and celebration

innocence and beauty of life

“Once a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous”

Metaphor and personifiication heroic powerful and noble strong

alive free and powerfull

“He no longer existed”

ostracised

Metaphor social death/ meant to die

social crititque

“He must have wondered which had been the better way to die”

Cyclical death is unresolved

Ambiguity - tragedy

uncertainty and empathy