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Comparing Suffering In Musee Des Beaux Arts And Fall Of Icarus

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Time is forever moving forward, constantly progressing and as time progresses, societal values and beliefs adjust and develop, yet there are some values and ideas that remain constant. Despite suffering being a natural and an unavoidable aspect of human life, people have developed the skill of avoiding its existence. Even though created in disparate time periods, Ovid’s ‘Icarus’, Breughel’s ‘Fall Of Icarus’ and Auden’s ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’, all present their society's principle of human indifference towards the suffering and the continuance of the human life, as suffering occurs.

W. H. Auden’s ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ exposes society’s indifference towards suffering. Through the poet's conversational tone, Auden places the reader in front of Breughel’s painting ‘Fall Of Icarus’, and uses the piece to manifest how self-concerned human beings are. Suffering is a normal aspect of life, it is occurring all the time, while we go along with our normal activities, “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along”. Just like the enjambment of Auden’s poem, life doesn't pause, even in the face of human suffering. At the time this poem was …show more content…

But just because there is suffering in the world, why should the rest of humanity care? A question

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