Blog Post #38

What Do I Notice?

Hm, well a lot is occuring in this painting. It seems as if everyone is doing their own thing, a fisherman, a hiker, a merchant? Many ships traveling, other towns and mountains in the distance, yet no one seems concerned about the drowning person? 

What is the artist trying to portray? 

The artist along with Williams and Auden try and display how nobody notices Incarus' fall. 

Upon comparing the two poems and the painting, I have found that they each are in a way about Icarus' famous fall. The first poem by William Carlos Williams specifically focuses on Icarus and his story and the second poem by W. H. Auden uses Icarus' fall to contribute to their overall message. Most importantly, each of the poets talk about how nobody notices Icarus. Upon first looking at the painting, you don't even notice Icarus until you look a little closer and see two legs in the water. The painter and poets did this on purpose and from this we can see that the important theme of the tree pieces is "the ignorance of the comfortable many when faced with the obvious suffering and peril of the helpless few".

But how does this all relate to King Lear? The answer to that can best be found in the poem by W. H. Auden when he says,"The old Masters: how well they understood its human position: how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;.." This line is very powerful because it emphasizes how in the painting and the poems that the death of Icarus goes unnoticed. People don't realize the value of a moment until its gone and even though the Flight of Daedalus and Icarus is the most well known greek story, it is ironic that nobody in the poems or the painting seem to care or notice that it happened at all. This is similar to King Lear because  as the play goes on Lear slowly realizes the mistakes he has made and how he could have and should have done things differently because it would have prevented the chaos that has consumed their lives. Irony also plays a big part in this Shakespearian play as it does in these three works as well. People can be ignorant at times especially in King Lear when the audience sees or notices something that the other characters do not when they are faced with hard decisions or suffering and peril of the helpless few.