THOUGHTFULLY responding to this student post,  What might you add to this student responses?  What questions might you pose in order to prompt further thought?  Responding with "I like what you said", "I thought the same thing as you did" or "I agree" simply will not fulfill the requirements for this part of the assignment. Basically, you should have a discussion with your classmates.  Discussions are intended to substitute for traditional classroom discussion.

Poem Discussion

For this discussion, I have chosen to complete option one discussing the use of imagery and figures of speech in the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The beginning of the story states that the character of the story met a traveler, referring to a statue this statement gives a false personification of something that is lifeless. It is interesting that the author used the word traveler to describe the statue, as if the statue had been moved or that "Ozymandias" was a traveler when he was alive. In the poem the Shelley describes the legs of the statue in the second line stating, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / stand in the desert". The information in this poem gives a very vivid image of something when you pay close attention. The poem explains that the face of the statue is halfway in the sand and that it has a frown and a "sneer of cold command", on it. The "sneer of cold command", gives an image of someone that is very serious about what they have said, or are very serious about something. Readers can picture the still lips of the statue as if they command attention from its onlookers. All of the words that the author used were very specific and detailed. A fine detail of the first line in the poem is the reference of an "antique land", that gives the image to a reader of a land that is very old and is a traditional place or a land that has long been left by its civilization. Much of this poem is imagery to paint a picture of what the author saw when standing in front of a large statue. The words that the author used to describe this create a large amount of detail.