An Explication of W.H. Auden "Musee Des Beaux Arts"

In the poem “Icarus” by Edward Field is alluding to the myth of Icarus and Daedalus which is set in a contemporary setting. The poem takes a spin on the myth were instead of Icarus drowning, he is set in today 's world as the fall of the great hero, nothing but an ordinary man. It reveals that Icarus cannot handle being just ordinary and “wishes he had drowned.” (line 30). Through imagery, diction and irony Fields uses a contemporary setting to convey the life of Icarus who is living as a man who once achieved greatness.

Suffering is embedded in our daily lives. There are devastating things going on in our daily environments and yet, people seldom realize this as they occupy themselves with other tasks. W.H. Auden’s, Musée des Beaux Arts, is a statement on human perceptions and how we use them to observe, or block out human suffering. While we are doing ordinary things like eating, or opening a window, bad things can be happening to others and it is as easy as looking up, to see what is actually going on. Auden illustrates societies’ indifference to human suffering through the form of his poem and by alluding to artwork that compares human perceptions and juxtaposes ordinary images with images of suffering and tragedy.

Owen uses Imagery as another method to convey the brutality of war and also as a means of contrast to show his life before and after. In the third stanza he creates a picture of blood being poured away; “poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry” and he uses metaphorical language to emphasis the point that he nearly bled to death as you cannot literally pour the blood out of your veins.

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

Characters change in stories just like people change in life. In the story “The Flight of Icarus” by Sally Benson and the poem “Icarus’s Flight” by Stephen Dobyns the character Icarus learned to listen to his father. This relates to the theme for the story and poem which is that we should listen to our parents.

W. H. Auden's poem however is quite different. "Musee des Beaux Arts" is written in free verse, meaning that the poem is essentially "free" of meter, regular rhythm, or a rhyme scheme. Like the specific structural considerations of the sonnet form, the seeming lack of structure which free verse offers is purposely employed and works to illuminate the poem's meaning. In Auden's poem, the long irregular lines, subtly enforced by the irregular end rhyme pattern, create a casual, conversational air more prosaic than poetic, and a somewhat nonchalant tone which is reflective of the compassionate world illustrated in Brueghel's art. For example, in Auden's poem there is a subtle rhyme scheme that is throughout the poem. The poem's first line rhymes with the fourth but the fifth rhymes with the seventh. So although there is a rhyme scheme it is a non-traditional. This concept imitates the painting in the way that when looking at the painting you know that Icarus is drowning somewhere, but you do not see him until you really start concentrating on the images painted on the canvas. The casual, easy-going argument the tone suggests is ironic for the

The two myths, Phaethon and Daedalus and Icarus, describe the fatal mistake of 2 foolishly ambitious young boys. Throughout the two texts the authors, Bernard Evslin and Geraldine McCaughrean, who respectively rewrote Phaethon and Daedalus and Icarus, use the literary elements of characterization and imagery to convey their shared theme. Through the use of characterization and imagery, both mythological protagonists, Phaethon and Icarus, demonstrate a common lesson that a prideful disregard of the warnings from those who are older and wiser can quickly lead to disastrous consequences.

Positioned alongside Central Park in the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museum, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a certain set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within the museum. Brent Plate in Religion, Art, and Visual Culture argues that “objects obtain different meanings in different locations and historical settings.”An object placed on display behind a glass case inside a museum would hold a vastly different meaning if it was put on sale by a street vendor, like the ones who set up their tables in close proximity to the Met. The different meanings that objects are able to obtain is attributed to the relationships that are established between the object itself and the environment that surrounds it. These relationships often involve the kind of audience that a museum attracts, where the work is exhibited, and how the exhibits within a museum is planned out. Museums subsequently have the ability to control how these relationships are established which influences the way a viewer is able to construct meaning. When a visitor observes an object on display at the Met, they instinctively construct a certain set of

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

-The Landscape with the Fall of Icarus: By giving Icarus the ability to fly, he has a freedom unfathomed by most. This freedom is too much for someone to handle and he does even what he is told not to, by flying close to the sun.

Using the myth of Icarus, the speaker establishes the importance of myths in her relationship with her father and the lessons that follow them as they mature.

The two poems “Waiting for Icarus” and “Musée des Beaux Arts” are narrative poems. “Musée des Beaux Arts” is a poem written by W. H. Auden and published in 1938. “Waiting for Icarus” is a poem written by Muriel Rukeyser and published in 1973. The poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” is about how no one truly cares when a tragedy is taking place, unless said tragedy concerns them directly. The poem “Waiting for Icarus” tells the story about a woman who is reminiscing being abandoned by her lover while waiting for him at the beach. The two poems have a great deal of similarities and differences between them. Despite the fact that “Musée des Beaux Arts” uses an indifferent tone and irregular rhyme scheme and “Waiting for Icarus” uses a melancholic tone and no discernible rhyme scheme, both poems use the themes of abandonment and suffering and the myth of Icarus in order to convey to their readers how people deal with pain and misery.

The painting and the poem had a similar tone in their depictions of the fall of Icarus. Both had a tone that was calm, merry, but also dark. In the painting, it showed an farmer plowing his fields, a man herding his sheep, a man looking into the water, all on a hot, sunny day. Meanwhile, while these people are merry and living their lives, Icarus is drowning in the water right near them. The poem states, “It was spring, the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling...” This shows a calm mood, in how it was spring, the pageantry was awake and tingling, people were happy and joyful. All of this was happening while Icarus was drowning, and it was a, “splash quite unnoticed.” Both the painting and the poem showed people calmly and joyfully living their lives, selfishly, while not even noticing Icarus drowning right in front of them.

With this quote, it shows Icarus’ immaturity, foolish and playfulness when it comes to his father’s inventions and his life. Icarus is a young boy which is evident from the quote above because he is playing with the wax and watching and admiring his dad. If it was an older boy, he’d probably be off by himself or helping his father with his inventions instead of playing with the wax in the wings. Icarus is an innocent boy who doesn’t understand the importance of being responsible. Not being responsible leads him to his death, which could have been avoided if he had paid attention to what his father had told him. Icarus got swept up in the moment when he was flying, and lost all of his thoughts which lead him to the mistake of flying too high.

The speaker furthermore conveys the idea that nature is a grandeur that should be recognized by including the element of imagery. The poet utilizes imagery as a technique to appeal to reader’s sense of sight . It is “the darkest evening of the year” (line 8) and a traveller and his horse stop “between the woods and frozen lake” (line 7). By writing with details such as these, readers are capable of effortlessly envisioning the peaceful scenery that lies before the speaker. The persona then draws on reader’s sense of sound. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” The illustration allows readers to not only see,