“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a poem about the “colossal shipwreck” left over from what used to be a fantastic empire. In the middle of a desert, we are talking about sand, sun and then more sand, there are the shattered stone legs and the head of what probably used to be a rather impressive statue of Ramses II (or “Ozymandias” in Greek, which just sounds much cooler). The inscription on the base reads: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look at my works, O Mighty One, and despair!” Which makes us laugh, as everything around the statue is totally empty in what seems like a 50 mile radius. (SOME – one – LOST – his – EMMMM – WORSE !!!)
Added to the general feeling of loneliness is the fact that the poem is told in the past tense (which adds chronological distance) by an anonymous stranger (which adds narrative distance) over a distant place (which adds a good traditional regular distance). Can you hear the echo? While we’re tempted to poke fun at Ozy and his delusions of grandeur, what we humbly realize as we sit in our pajamas eating generic brand cereal is that this guy had a nation! Aside from my carbon footprint, how am I supposed to leave my footprint on the world? (A plot quickly unfolds to change the Trump Tower lettering …)
Now that you’ve immersed yourself in crippling existential funk (which would be a great name for the band, by the way), let’s think back to the end of a more recent era, like the roaring twenties in an economically booming America. Does any literary work come to mind? Probably The Great Gatsby, which, as you will notice, is also recounted in retrospect in the third person about a distant place, socio-economically speaking. There is that echo again. Like Ozymandias, Gatsby is determined to achieve greatness, although in his case, it is because he is magnetically drawn to a mysterious “single tiny, distant green light.” Aliens? The 7-11? An industrial power bug killer?!? Probably just the light from East Egg, the really posh part of Long Island where his filthy rich and utterly unreachable high school sweetheart lives.
While Gatsby’s goal isn’t to build a real empire, he might as well have done it, considering the amount of trouble he ends up going through: he denies his family, changes his name, spends years working clandestinely as a smuggler, amasses a fortune, assumes . a new identity, buys a huge mansion in an expensive neighborhood and then proceeds to squander his life savings on lavish parties by right – how do we say this? – idiots, EVERYTHING to impress an old high school fling that’s not especially nice to start with. (And you thought finding your photo in someone else’s locker crossed the line.) Unfortunately for Gatsby, the money runs out, the girlfriend gives up, the husband finds out, and Gatsby, well, Gatsby gets shot. The end! About.
Like the shattered Ozymandias monument, Gatsby symbolically leaves a part of himself behind that eerie green light streaming over the bay, and while this remnant does little justice to what it once was, it nonetheless underscores the emptiness of the surrounding moral wasteland. Go suck an egg, East Egg!