It isn’t the first time that the title of a Breaking Bad episode has had people scratching their heads.
Of course, the episode titled “To’hajillee” from the previous week would have caused them to wonder as to what the title meant especially if they missed an English Poetry 101 class.
But let’s move on to this week’s title – so what does ‘Ozymandias’ mean?
It is a sonnet written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and published in January 1818 which tells the story of a traveler who sees an ancient monument in a desert where all that remains is the giant legs of a king with no sign of the kingdom that he once ruled.
The inscription on the pedal also speaks of the great works that the king once achieved yet what is unspoken (but rather clear) is that this mighty king has fallen along with everything else that he has accomplished.
Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias, wasn’t a work of fiction but actually based on a description created by Diodorus Siculus who spent time in both Egypt and Rome and was a historian by profession from the first century BCE.
Yet Shelley wasn’t the only English poet to write about this statue. His friend Horace Smith published a poem titled “On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below” which has not lasted as much as Shelley’s poems have.
But what does this mean for Walter White?
With only a few shows of Breaking Bad remaining, it probably points to the fact that while the powerful have done great things during their time, it is the artist’s work that remains
And one can’t help but speculate as to whether there exists a sculptor of the ‘Breaking Bad’ series…
