In poetry and literature, irony is used as a rhetorical or literary technique to elaborate on what something appears to be on the surface in contrast to what it actually is. In the text, situational irony is used when the traveller speaks of the king's words engraved on the pedestal. Ozymandias, the king, is proud of his amazing works and of all he constructed in his lifetime, believing that would make him mighty for all time. However, nothing remains around the pedestal; the desert's sands have engulfed all of his colossal works. Therefore, it is the contradiction between what is boasted (that is, the amazing constructions) versus what is actually there (a large stretch of sand and decay) that constitutes the irony in the passage.

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3 years ago

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zhenek [66]

Top-left: Wealth worship. The landlord is so impressed and intimidated by the bank note that he barely dares to take it.
Middle-left: Impending doom. You can tell that the narrator is experiencing a sense of upcoming catastrophe through phrases like "I judged that there as going to be a crash." The situation the narrator is in also involves danger: "I must swim across or drown."
Top-right: Rags to riches. Taken literally, this expression means going from the poorest to the wealthiest one possibly can be. But in this context, it is more about 'social riches:' the character goes from being insignificant in the eyes of others, to widely influential.
Middle-right: Wealth worship. The landlord is willing to accept any of the narrator's whims simply because he is wealthy, but at the same time, he fears him and his power: "he hoped he wasn't afraid to trust as rich a gentleman as I was."
Bottom: Impending doom. The threatening danger here is expressed by the fact that a "thin crust" is all that keeps the narrator from falling into the crater.

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3 years ago

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