Analysis Of Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus

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"The Fall of Icarus", a famous artwork drawn by Pieter Bruegel, touches upon the Greek myth of the tragedy of Icarus. Such a famous artwork that remained well-known through the passage of time undoubtedly inspired other poets to base their poem on the artwork. "Musee Des Beaux Arts" written by W.H.Auden, and "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by William Carlos Williams are two of the most renown poems that is based on the artwork. Although both of the poems are based on the same artwork, they share a similar message but expressed through different methods. "Musee Des Beaux Arts" conveys a deep sorrow feeling of missing a beloved one to the reader, and then regarding death as an evitable cycle of life, whilst "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" simply describes about the artwork's main features and overall appearance, and then tops off with a brief summary of Icarus’ death. "Musee Des Beaux Arts" starts off a generalization of how humans think of dealing with the trauma of death with "About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: How well they understood: How it takes place.". The lines refers to how the elderly treats death to be an inevitable course of event that could not be avoided, and is further reinforced with "How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting", hinting to the reader that death might even be a relief to the elderly that has experienced many events in their lives. "That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course" and "For the miraculous birth, there must be Children who did not specially want it to happen," acts as a metaphor to how death and birth are necessary and inevitable, and all of it is a part of a cycle that humans live in. In the second stanza the generalization shifts to the... ... middle of paper ... ...h as an inevitable course of life, and uses Icarus’ death in the last stanza as an example to highlight his feelings. “The Landscape with The Fall of Icarus” instead focuses on the insignificance of Icarus’ death by using various techniques such as irony in the title, including very little detail on the death, the order of the events, and the lack of punctuation. To conclude, the poem “Landspace with the fall of Icarus” enables the reader to quickly understand the theme of the poem. The poem alludes to only one event, the tragedy of Icarus. The poem “Musee des Beaux Arts” however requires the reader to take time in order to fully grasp the meaning of the poem and the theme of the poem. Although the two poems refer to the same event and have similar themes, due to difference in their form, structure, tone and language the reader is affected at different levels.

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