Lab Activity 49: Verbal and Situational Irony

Chapter 10: Tone and Purpose
Lab Activity 49: Verbal and Situational Irony

Objective
To identify verbal and situational irony.

Step 2: Read the following poem, and then answer the questions.

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. 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.

—Hayward, ed., The Oxford Book of Nineteenth-Century Verse, 1964, p. 279

5. The title of the poem refers

a. to an exotic land in the desert.

b. to a king from long ago.

c. to the traveler who is telling the story.

d. to a life quest in search of truth.

6. The phrase shattered visage refers to the

a. dream the speaker has in the desert.

b. hallucination the traveler has while on his quest.

c. statue of a king from long ago.

d. shipwreck.

7. The words "and sneer of cold command / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read" imply that

a. the traveler had great respect for the statue he encountered.

b. the king was once powerful and feared and this knowledge was captured in stone by the artist.

c. the traveler's quest required a journey through a cave that had been cursed.

d. the artist was also the king.

8. "Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away."

From this line you can infer that

a. the huge statue is still intact and overlooking a great empire.

b. the king is well remembered because of the empire that remains.

c. the huge statue is in ruins and all other signs of the empire are covered by sand.

d. many other empires have tried to model themselves after this one, but none has equaled its grandeur.

9. The entire poem presents what kind of irony?

a. The poem presents verbal irony because the sculptor's message was the opposite of what he believed.

b. The poem presents situational irony because the poet's life paralleled that of the traveler.

c. The poem presents verbal irony because the king's words were intended to mean the opposite of what he said.

d. The poem presents situational irony because the inscription on the statue is the opposite of what the traveler saw.