DICTION

Diction serves as a direct outlet for the author to describe his emotions and messages to his reader. In Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias,"the narrator illustrates the affects of Time by illustrating once beautiful and glorious objects and comparing those things with their now diminished remains; "Nothing besides remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck..."The narrator clearly juxtaposes his initial feelings of the seemingly beautiful masterpieces with his later feelings of resentment towards Time because it destroys everything in the world, both good and bad. The diction allows the reader to fully understand his frustration; "decay," shattered," and "wrinkled." These words all serve to prove to the reader that everything, even beauty, is meaningless because Time will eventually destroy it all. In addition, the narrator's soft and slow diction allows his meaning to be stated in a very delicate way. He never directly states that Time is horrible and that it destroys everything, but his descriptive diction allows the reader to completely understand and relate to the poem's meaning.