L. Lake

WR 342, Intermediate Poetry

Prof. James Benton

5/21/2021

The Great Equalizer

A Critical Essay

Time.

The passing of time leading to mortality is a reality we must all eventually face, terms met or not. Poetry, as written traditionally, is a form of communication to relay to the audience a message or a lesson. “Ozymandias” is a narrative poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that speaks of hubris as folly, due to the finite nature of material shows of glory and power. This seems to be felt by J. Alfred Prufrock; a man sensing his mortality creeping up on him while he wanders the backstreets of a soot-riddled city (much like London, England at the time) as the namesake of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot. I believe that this notional thread of mortality is what ties these two poems together; bridging their meanings.

In “Ozymandias”, the story is simply the reader or the author meeting with a traveler, who tells a tale of the ruin of a colossal, solitary statue in the desert sands in an ancient land: The remains are two torsoless legs of stone and nearby, the form of a sneering head sits in the sand. Engraved at the base beneath the feet is the proclamation, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Shelley, lines 10-11). Ironically, boasts of his so-called “mighty” works amounted to the ruins of statues, broken and worn down under the buffeting of the vast, empty sands, leaving only an incomplete and unflattering impression of himself, “Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,/The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;” (Shelley, line 7-8), carved the sculptor who knew the king’s true stature.

To grab the reader’s attention in “Ozymandias”, Shelley uses the rhyming scheme of “A, B, A, B” strategically punctuated with alliteration for emphasis to depict the titular Ozymandias or Pharaoh Ramses II (Poetry Foundation, line 10) as a haughty dictator with his “sneer of cold command” (Shelley, line 5), ordering others to gaze upon his fame carved in stone, displaying his prestige, power, and wealth, arrogantly proclaiming himself “King of Kings”. This title is anachronistically attributed by Ozymandias to himself by Shelley’s hand to depict that Ozymandias thought himself equal to the man that title is historically attributed to Jesus the Christ, ordained as God in the form of a man. Such an absurd level of hubris used to show that somewhere during his rulership, Ozymandias lost touch with the reality of his mortality. This highly condense poem doesn’t mince words with its subject. “Ozymandias” is an illustrated message of futility towards putting too much stock in the material aspects. As Jesus of Nazareth himself said in Matthew 6:19, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (NKJV). This speaks of the finite and passing nature of material objects, including one’s own life. The poem as a whole is written in the structure of a love letter but read like the opposite, which coincides with the “Love Song” reading in a similarly unromantic substance while being framed romantically in Mr. Prufrock’s musings.

In his long-lined musings, Mr. Prufrock seems well aware of this impermanence and his mortality with phrases such as, “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,/And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,” (Eliot, lines 89-90) which refers to the notion of the fabled Grim Reaper waiting to give him his coat and lead him to his waiting death, as if a hearse were waiting for him outside. This is emphasized previously by the lines,

“For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;”

(Eliot, lines 50-52) with a lack of certainty coupled with a sense of humility from his self-conscious fear of the reality of his life undeniably having a quantitative end. He does this again afterwards more directly as, “I grow old... I grow old...I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” (Eliot, lines 125-126) as if the fear is growing, due to his dawning self-conscious uncertainty of when he will eventually die with the certainty tha he will. We, as conscious beings, must all come to face this conundrum sooner or later. Spending our life self-aggrandizing for personal glory or serving self pleasure is ultimatley in vain. Despite this, human nature strives to pursue such things, nonetheless; to be seen, to be heard, and to be known as self-validation. In essence, to feel significant in this vast cosmos, and to feel pleasure, including pleasure inherant in the fulfillment of the former desires. Pharaoh Rameses sought these in physical testaments of his power over the lives of others, wanting to be forever remembered as powerful and glorious, while Mr. Prufrock essentially wanted to be more loved and significant before he died. The motivator to leave home was the pressure of aging driving his own self-serving ambitions through great uncertainty strongly emphasized with four repetitions of “Do I dare?” and five iterations questioning “Would it have been worth it/worth while”. The repetitious, enjambed line, long-form poem suits it well to emphaize Mr. Prufrock’s nagging uncertainties and worries of his future. Both men are shown wanting; desiring to feel significant and to fulfill how they viewed their lives would be lived to the fullest. As Eliot might put it, “To lead you to an overwhelming question” (Line 10), the overarching theme of both these poem and question that crosses human hearts can be distilled into this: “What will remain of me when I am gone?”

The answer I find suitable to me is the rest of Jesus’ talk of material gains in Matthew 6:20-21 imploring, “but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (NKJV). I see such mortality in myself and that this material world has no ultimate permanence. Due to this, I feel that my life ought to greatly emphasize aiding others around me through gifts of goodwill and loving care; treasure that will positively last beyond my life. I view poetry as a means to share the beauty of human expression that digs more vastly than mere self-expression. It sings of common struggles, ambitions, trials, and triumphs; able to enter through people’s mental walls to ask the most significant questions of what matters with mortality being one of its most popular subjects, such as in “Ozymandias” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.

Sources Cited:

Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.” Poetry, 1915, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.

“Matthew 6, Verse 19.” Holy Bible, Nelson Bibles, 1982, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206&version=NKJV.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.” Shelley's Poetry and Prose, 1977, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias.