Edison Pan, Period 2, 12/15/22

 

Edison Pan, Period 2, 12/15/22

Modern Mythology 2023

Literacy & Learning

• Write about your thoughts regarding any of the fiction or nonfiction covered in class.

• Reflect on any new information you have learned in English class by considering how that learning influences your critical perception.

• How is what you’re learning applied to any other classes/the world around you?

Among the many lessons that were covered over in class, there was one that stood out to me more than the others. That was the lesson of the story of Daedelus. While I knew of the story beforehand, when I was introduced to the poems “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden and “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams, my previous perceptions of the story completely changed.

When I first read the story of Daedelus in third grade, I realized that the story mainly touches on the themes of excessive pride or arrogance also known as hubris. Like many other Greek heroes, Icarus’s downfall was caused by his hubris. Despite his father’s repeated warnings to not fly too high, Icarus proceeded to ignore them, thinking that he knew better, leading to his death. 

From such a simple story, I thought that its lesson on hubris would also be simple. However, when I read the two poems, all my preconceptions were shattered. In the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”, we are introduced to the scenario where a plowman noticed Icarus falling into the water and chose to ignore it. On the other hand in the poem “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” Icarus fell into the water without a single person noticing. While these scenarios are different from each other, they both further touch upon the theme of hubris and made the story out to be more complex than I initially thought it was.“Musée des Beaux Arts” gives off the theme of how while you may be important in your eyes, in someone else’s perspective you may not matter at all. On the other hand, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” gives off the theme that you don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, even if you die, time will continue to move on. All the poems enhance the idea of hubris found within the story and give out the theme of how you are not as important as you think you are. 

As the story’s themes turned out to be far more complex than I thought it would initially be, the idea that even the simplest stories may have themes far more complex than I may have initially thought has been cemented in my mind. Nowadays, after the lesson on the story of Daedelus, whenever I read a story, even outside of class, I now dig deeper into even the simplest story to try to find any symbolism or theme hidden deep within a story, unlike how I used to be in the past, where I would only have bothered to look at the story’s most obvious theme and call it a day.