Icarus Poetry Analysis

Authors may use other literary works as a backdrop to help show a message or theme of their own works. In the works “Musee des Beaux Arts,” “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus,” and “To A Friend Whose Work has Come to Triumph,” the authors use the myth of Icarus and Daedalus as this backdrop. Auden, Williams, and Sexton use the myth of Icarus as comparisons in their poems, but for different reasons. The authors, Auden, Williams, and Sexton, allude to this myth in their poems to either show Icarus’ story in its insignificance or in its triumph. In W.H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts,” he uses the myth of Icarus to show how even though Icarus drowning in the sea may have been a great tragedy, it went unnoticed and the world carries on like nothing happened. Auden first shows how life goes on in the first stanza of his poem with the line “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.” This line shows that people could be doing such trivial things, while another person could possibly be mourning the loss of someone. His lines about the kids and the dogs show that they are innocent and completely oblivious to the fact that someone may be suffering or dying. In the second stanza, Auden brings in the myth of Icarus by talking about the painting Icarus by Brueghel. Auden says that the farmer “may / Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, / But for him it was not an important failure.” In these lines, Auden makes the audience ask what an “important failure” is. To the farmer, it was unimportant enough to ignore the cries. In William Carlos Williams’ “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus,” he uses the painting by Brueghel to show that the fall of Icarus went unnoticed by most. Williams could be showing us that this is what he fears will happen to him when he dies. His life and work will be just “a splash quite unnoticed.” In Williams poem, there is a lack of punctuation, therefore having a lack of inflection. Yet at the end of the poem, the last line “Icarus drowning” has a period at the end. This forces the audience to see the irony of Icarus’ death in the presence of life. This can …show more content…
Icarus fell to his death because he was overconfident and flew to close to the sun. Sexton shows Icarus not as arrogant, but as adventurous. She constantly praises him for taking risks. The tone of Sexton’s poem is very lighthearted and happy, unlike the other two poems. Sexton uses the myth of Icarus in a positive way. She shows that what he did was a great and brave thing, the opposite of what Williams and Auden use the myth as. The message of Sexton’s poem is to take risks. Her poem tells the audience that it is better to take risks like Icarus than to not take any risks at all. Taking risks gives one the chance to be great and remembered like Icarus as Sexton states in her final line: “See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down / while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.” Sexton shows Icarus as great and being remembered for risking everything, while his father does not take any risks and goes straight into town