Question

What does the synecdoche "The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed" mean exactly? Also, what does the line "nothing beside remains" mean? Who is it spoken by? The author, or Ozymandias?

Answer 1

The word 'them' in both cases refer to the expression of the face of the king Ozymandias.

The expression 'The hand that mocked them' means the hand of the sculptor. The meaning of the word 'mock' here means imitate, in other words, 'model'. That is the hand of the sculptor that moulded the facial expression.

'The heart that fed them' is the heart of the Ozymandias because his is the heart that brought the unpleasant expression to his face. It cannot be the heart of the sculptor. The synecdoche is often misinterpreted as the heart of the sculptor. The kings heart caused the expression and the sculptor's hand moulded it because he had known the expression well.

'Nothing remains' means apart from the broken statue nothing of Ozymandias' 'works' remains. It is spoken by the poet.

Answer 2

Explanation:

in this line, ' The hand that mocked and the heart that fed' The hand is considered to be of the sculptor because the word mock means imitate, so we understand that the sculptor has copied or imitated the statue of Ozymandias and the heart that fed means that Ozymandias had a cruel, arrogant and merciless heart which defies his personality resulting the sculptor to create a statue in those expression I.e., wrinkled lip, sneer of cold command,etc

I hope it was helpful.