Rapacious Vanity: Ozymandias

As humans, we all crave appreciation for our great works and deeds. For most a simple pat on the back for a job well done is enough to assuage this desire. Yet for others, a G-d complex makes them thirst for more. Their life becomes nothing but a linear trajectory towards their advancement paved with the poor souls left behind in the battle for greater things. All other of life’s great enjoyments are frivolous and deemed distractions. Yet, what happens when this G-d reaches their end? Percy Bysshe Shelly captures the answer to this question in the cautionary tale Ozymandias.

Shelly opens the poem with the framing device of a speaking traveler; one who knows life, has lived it fully, and seen it for its various wonders. Here, the wanderer begins with the image of sandblasted, broken, and trunk-less statue in the desert. Upon further reading, it is found that this statue is of none other than Ozymandias, or Ramses II of Egypt. The inscription at the bottom of this tells all who pass that this is in fact the king of kings, to look upon his works and despair! Just in the inscription one can see this was a man who lived a life of vain trajectory who relied solely upon his works to define him. He set out to have great statues placed in his honor all about the lands and here one stands in sand. Yet, the legs are trunkless, much like the missing heart and soul of a ruthless leader. The shattered visage that lies upon the soft sands, mocked to perfection by the sculpture, shows a cold sneer and wrinkled lips. This is not a face of joy but one of bitterness for never achieving true happiness. And all of this is found in the middle of the desert by a single wonderer as the level sands stretch far and wide. Ozymandias’ single passion in life became all for which he was known. Happiness met vanity in the desert and happiness was able to walk away where as the statue, being vanity incarnate, was cursed to stand still in the sands of time.

Life is truly a balance of all things and Shelly was well aware of this. Through the use of a framing device to dichotomize the two extremes, the reader can see where a balance is needed in life to avoid being left as a shattered image in the timeline of history. By finding this balance, one can avoid the lone and level stretch of sands. 

Jewish Spirit: The Tyger from a Holocaust Prisoners Prosepective

When one thinks of the atrocities that were the Holocaust, the first thing that comes to mind is typically not The Tyger by William Blake. However, this poem speaks of the same sentiment felt by all those within the walls of various work camps throughout Europe: How could a loving G-d that creates such beauty also create such pain for his people?

The first four opening lines "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/ In the forests of the night/ What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" begin this image of such beauty in the world with a fire that burns within it. There is a pain and hate masked in beauty that prowls the night and G-d made this, leaving one to ask: how could this be?

Following is "In what distant deeps or skies/ Burnt the fire in thine eyes?" These are the lines where the Jew begins to not only see deeper into the eyes but feel the fires; these fires are of hate and of the painful ways in which they are their loved ones much die. Later again, the image of the furnace is revisited as madness in which this "tyger" was forged is spoken of. This use of words only reinforces sentiment of atrocities faced, all burning within the fevered brain of this prowling beast.

The lines continue on with "When the stars threw down their spears/ And water's heaven with their tears,/ Did he smile his work to see?/ Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" In these four lines you have the full hell of Jewish thought throughout this dehumanizing period of history. When G-d sent these atrocities, these men and women, this "tyger," and G-d's chosen people cried out to Him, did He smile or even care or were the Jews truly abandoned in the endless night?

Though written well before the time of the atrocities felt by the Jewish people, the betrayal of one's higher power felt in this poem transcends time. These emotions are something as primal as the tiger and its pain will continue to burn on as we search for answers as to why we have all become lost.

-Please note that due to the author's beliefs, G-d will be spelled as such out of respect.