Transience, destruction and other stimulants in "ozymandias" and the great gatsby
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a poem about the “colossal wreck” left over from what used to be a fantastical empire. In the middle of a desert – we’re talking sand, sun and then more sand – you find the legs and shattered stone head of what probably used to be a rather impressive statue of Ramses II (or “Ozymandias” in Greek, which simply much cooler sound). The inscription on the base reads: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look at my works, mighty one, and despair!” Which makes us laugh, since everything around the statue is totally empty for what seems like a 50 mile radius. (SOME – one – LOST – theirs – EMMMM – THE WORST!!!)
Adding to the general sense of loneliness is the fact that the poem is narrated in the past tense (which adds chronological distance) by an anonymous stranger (which adds narrative distance) about a faraway place (which adds a nice regular distance to the old one). Can you hear the echo? Although we are tempted to mock Ozy and his delusions of grandeur, what we humbly realize as we sit in our pajamas eating generic brand cereal is, this guy had a nation! Other than a carbon footprint, how am I supposed to leave my mark on the world? (A plot quickly develops to change the letters on Trump Tower…)
Now that you’ve been thrown into some crippling existential funk (which would make a great band name, by the way), let’s think about the end of a more recent era, like the Roaring Twenties in economically prosperous America. Does any literary work come to mind? Probably The Great Gatsby, which, as you’ll note, is also told retrospectively in the third person about a faraway place, socioeconomically speaking. There’s that echo again. Like Ozymandias, Gatsby is determined to achieve greatness, though in his case it’s because he’s magnetically drawn to a mysterious “one tiny, faraway green light.” Aliens? The 7-11?? An industrial-strength bug zapper?!? Probably just the light of East Egg, the really fancy part of Long Island where his filthy rich and completely unattainable high school girlfriend lives.
While Gatsby’s goal isn’t to build an actual empire, he might as well have, considering the amount of trouble he ends up going through: denying his family, changing his name, spending years working undercover as a smuggler, amassing a fortune, assuming 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 shall I put it? – jerks, EVERYTHING to impress an old high school fling that isn’t especially nice to begin with. (And you thought finding your photo in someone else’s locker crossed the line.) Unfortunately for Gatsby, the money runs out, the girlfriend runs off, the husband finds out, and Gatsby, well, Gatsby gets shot. The end! A little.
Like the shattered monument to Ozymandias, Gatsby symbolically leaves a part of himself behind in that eerie green light spilling over the bay, and while this remnant does little justice to what he once was, it nevertheless underscores the emptiness. of the surrounding moral wasteland. Go suck on an egg, East Egg!