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Is the story of icarus a metaphor4/17/2024 ![]() ![]() There is also the mention of a “gang war”, which refers to the existence of illegal criminal gangs in modern cities that run loose even in the presence of the police. Gentle fricative alliteration in the understatement “only the feathers floating” and powerful plosive alliteration in “police preferred” are used to assert Field’s disapproval of the police’s crude tendency to turn a blind-eye at the seemingly innocuous crime scene that belied Daedalus’ creation of magnificent wings. Words such as “police”, “witnesses”, “gang war” and “report” belong to the semantic field of ‘Law and Order’ and showcase the existence of corruption in contemporary judicial systems. Readers also note the quintessential theme of ‘Corruption in Judicial Systems’ highlighted in the first stanza, where Field uses an amalgamation of the old myth of Daedalus and Icarus as well as the contemporary life of modern humans to portray the flaws of modern civilization. Thus, Field successfully depicts how a vibrant young man turns into a jaded human as he lives in the vicious cycle of failure and demoralization in contemporary society. Readers recognize that the “wings” are a metaphor for ambition and that the “lighting fixture” is a metaphor for a mundane dream that he has no passion for in comparison to his dream to reach the sun, because a “lighting fixture” clearly pales in comparison to the vibrant energy of the sun. ![]() As time progresses, and he continues to fail, his wings become “small” as compared to his once magnificent wings in the original myth and his goals change from reaching the sun to just reaching a “lighting fixture” that is merely a poor substitute. However, as we read further, we see Icarus going through a multitude of failures as he “probes his wound” and “constructs small wings” to fly “to the lighting fixture on the ceiling”. He had moved on to a different setting, signifying human resilience of being able to recover from initial failure. However, despite his failure, Icarus had not “drowned”, but “he had swum away” to another city, signifying that his life had not ended as suddenly as the declaration “Drowned” on the police reports seemed to suggest. The poem opens with Icarus’ failure to fly close to the sun with his magnificent wings. Throughout the poem we observe the underlying recurring themes of ‘Human Ambition’ and ‘Failure’ as Field discusses the effect of disappointments on human motivation through the medium of the famous Greek myth of ‘Daedalus and Icarus’, with Icarus used as an anachronistic symbol for the average contemporary human with tall dreams. The poem closes with a tone of bitterness and finality, showing how repeated failures kill his self-confidence as he resigns himself to a life of mediocrity. The poem progresses as the self-centered society that surrounds him, suffocates his true identity and forces him to pretend to be someone he is not, effectively demoralizing him from achieving his dreams. The structure of the free verse third-person narration is effectual as it exposes the life of a human whose light of ambition dims after his first failure in achieving a life-long goal. Field makes use of an unusual recurring literary feature – anachronism – to shed light on these themes through the perspective of “Icarus”, a Greek hero who is placed out of his context in a contemporary society that is selfish and does not care for his troubles. ![]() “Icarus” by Edward Field is a poetic critical social commentary that highlights the flaws of modern society as well as the demoralizing effect of failures on human aspirations. ![]()
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