“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” Abraham Lincoln, 1862. Having power reveals who you are on the inside because it shows how you respond to being at a higher standard or ranking than everyone else, and what you do with your power. We witness in The Scarlet Pimpernel, Ozymandias, and Viva La Vida that there is figurative language all over to further enhance the fact that a ruler is somebody who honors their power and understands what they can do with it.
The authors of Ozymandias and The Scarlet Pimpernel both incorporate, personification into their writing because it helps magnify the idea, that the king and Chauvelin dissipated their power because they couldn’t comprehend the amount…show more content… Chauvelin had all the tools and power necessary to catch the Scarlet Pimpernel and still couldn't do it, “Only to hear that his wife’s hands had guided the human bloodhounds to the murder of Armand and his friends,” (294). Chauvelin played with his power and threw it around, that’s why he kept getting fooled and wasn’t triumphant. He knew where the Scarlet Pimpernel was, when he would be there, and who he would be with, but still couldn’t succeed. The ruler in Viva La Vida is no different from Chauvelin, when it comes down to how they took care of their power. He had thought that he was running a kingdom successfully, when in reality, it was all a lie, “One minute I held the key next the walls were closed on me and I discovered that my castle stand upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand,” ( Line 9-12). He believed he was running this strong sturdy kingdom, but that was before he knew the truth and he was tested. His ruling crumbled and fell because he didn’t respect the power he had. Both these men ruled with no limitations, but when they were tested it all vanished due to not being able to honor and respect the opportunity they had in front of them. Figurative language is shown constantly in all three of these writings all to convey the fact that being a worthy and loyal ruler is being accountable
