Liberty at the Barricades (a.k.a. Liberty Leading Her People) by Eugene Delacroix

Refers to the events of July 28, 1830. It shows Liberty as a woman moving the flag of liberation forward over the bodies of both the troops and the people.

During July of 1830, events were taking place that would be later called the Revolution of 1830 or the July Revolution. The second day of this three day affair was July 28th. Liberty at the Barricades, was meant to reflect the events in the center of Paris.

I like how an array of classes are represented in this piece. You have the man in the top hat, which would be a man of a higer class, and the two other subjects beside him, who are of a lower class. This was a great way for Delacroix to express how the idea of class was put aside to form a revolution against King Charles X.

The painting contains a fair amount of nationalistic symbolism. It seems that the flag is placed strategically in the middle of the painting and it becomes the focal point of the piece, for obvious reasons. The fact that Liberty is a little more to the right, but very bright, gives the statement that Liberty may be a predominant reason for this revolution, but more importantly it's liberty for the people of France.

This piece is a perfect interpretation of determination and commitment the people of France had shown to change what was going on before them. It is almost as if this piece makes me proud to be French and I'm not even French!

The Monroe Doctrine, James Monroe to Congress 12/2/1823

Prior Knowledge: The Monroe Doctrine was a U.S. document urging European nations to no longer colonize and interfere with the affairs of the Americas (This is including South, North, and Central) and in turn the Americas would remain neutral in the wars and conflict between European nations and their colonies.

In terms of the Monroe Doctrine, the first word that comes to mind is hegemony. A statement like the Monroe Doctrine seems like a ploy by the United States to dictate certain events to their advantage. Can someone say: the beginning of an era? In my Government book, there is a belief that the Monroe Doctrine was leaning more towards a public policy of isolationism. I'm not sure I agree with this since later, most of Latin America believed it to be a bit of an insult as if they could not handle their own affiars.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

In Ozymandias, the speaker tells of a meeting with a traveller. This traveller tells the speaker about a sculpture and a statue of some sort. The statue describes a king, Ozymandias. This complex series of descriptions that were esentially used to describe one thing, Ozymandias, seems a bit funny. I believe that it could respresent how distant the memory of this ruler is to the place he once presided over.

What is also interesting to me is the choice of the rulers names, Ozymandias. Usually, writers, in describing a ruler, would opt for names that would be familiar to a reader or that a reader would associate with majesty and power. His choice for the ruler's name could be to express that the ruler's "mighty works" have vanished. These works are so unrecognizable that his name too becomes unrecognizable.

Shelley also uses a lot of imagery that signify empitness and lack of substance to describe objects. For example, phrases such as "vast and trunkless legs of stone" or the use of a desert, an extremely remote location. This use of imagery could be connected with the "sense of despair" in the Romantic era.

In a nut shell, this sonnet tells about the inevitable end of a monarch's power and prestige. The primary question though is: who and what was Shelley referring to when he wrote this sonnet? First things first, the poem was written in 1817. From being aware of the date, I would infer that Shelley may have wrote this poem in reference to Napoleon Bonaparte because of his fall at Waterloo a couple years before the poem was written.