How does the symbol of the statue and its imagery contribute to the meaning of “Oxymandias”? Use evidence from the text to support your response.

Read passage below.

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Respuesta :

The broken statue is a symbol of the passage of time. It shows that no matter how powerful someone is, he can't fight the inevitable passage of time and that eventually we will all go down, just like the statue. The evidence is where they describe that everything around it is sand while the pedestal says "'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'", and yet he is broken and the lands are barren.