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Tag: ozymandias

  • Ozymandias: “Breaking Bad” Title Explained

    The most recent episode of “Breaking Bad” was titled “Ozymandias”, and after we collectively unclenched our posteriors for the week when the credits rolled, most of us wondered what it meant.

    The show is known for it’s smart writing and brilliant references, so it’s no surprise that the meaning behind “Ozymandias”–a two-hundred-year old poem–plays right into the show.

    “Ozymandias” was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and is based on a real person: Ramses the Great, in fact. The poem tells of a traveler who comes upon a broken statue in an empty desert, a likeness created of a man who once ruled his land with an iron fist but ultimately fell; everything he surveyed is gone, and the power he knew went with it. One can guess that this doesn’t bode well for Walter, then; if you’ve been keeping up with the show, you might have already suspected that. With only two episodes left in the series there are only a couple of ways the ending can go, and Walter, who has grown obsessive about what he does and has, many would say, become untouchable in his own mind, will certainly fall the hardest when the time comes.

    Image: YouTube

  • New Breaking Bad Trailer Channels Famous Ozymandias Sonnet and the Inevitable Fall of Kings

    AMC has just put out a new trailer for the upcoming season 5B of Breaking Bad, and it’s likely to give you chills.

    No new scenes, no hints at what’s to come – just Walter White calmly reciting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 sonnet “Ozymandias” over sprawling shots of the Albuquerque desert. Oh yeah, and the hat – Walter White’s “shattered visage.”

    It doesn’t take a scholar to read the implications in this trailer. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” tells the story of a monument, built by a proud and boastful king, which stands withered away by time. It’s a powerful poem that holds a simple message: no matter how powerful the king, everything comes to an end. It’s a poem about inevitable decline.

    “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

    Chills.

    Text for those interested in pulling out some kingly interpretations from the poem and how they relate to Walter White:

    I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
    The lone and level sands stretch far away

    [via AMC]