Paper Example. Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams, the author of the poem Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, depicts the indifference of human nature of indifference. The poet takes the allusion of the mythological character Icarus to display the human inclination to be indifferent and the fall of a man. The primary purpose of Williams is to show people's differences, social consciousness, and detachment in a beautiful, chaotic globe. Notably, the poet delivers this message through the utilization of poetic devices to link with the readers. Williams' masterful establishment of the poetic image shows that individuals should celebrate the use of pictures in day-to-day life as a reassurance of attractiveness in a universe where people act too rapidly to call their existence futile. Therefore, Williams utilizes literary devices such as imagery, euphemism, foreshadowing, and structure.

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Imagery

Williams establishes a vivid image of the adjacent landscape. Williams illustrates the surrounding community and scene as "awake tingling," which is ironic, as the poem should depict death. It seems the poet wants to offer a clear vision of what is happening in the poem by connecting it to the real world using descriptive language. There exist a personification of the world, such as 'sweating in the sun' and "pageantry of spring" (Williams, line 13, 6). The incorporation of personification and imagery aids the readers to envision and link with the poem (Sayakhan 99). Throughout the whole poem, the poet paints a picture for the people to illuminate the real world. In the last line, he says, 'this was Icarus drowning' to bring the image of the tragic death of Icarus hence overriding the poem as landscape (Williams, line 20-21).

Euphemism

The poet deployed euphemism to maintain the tone of the poem. The central theme of the poem is death; however, Williams utilizes dull language to mirror the nonexistent trouble Icarus drowning had on the surrounding world. The poet illustrates the event itself by incorporating the word "unsignificantly" and his drowning getting "quite unnoticed" by the people and sea (Williams, line 16, 19). It shows that people did not care about his death; hence the poet is adhering to the ironic tone. The significance of this euphemism attributes to the fact that all people in the world share a collective experience, which is the natural inclination to take mental images that create structures of related feelings and thoughts.

Foreshadowing

The poet uses a more significant deal of foreshadowing towards Icarus' death. The imagery displayed regarding spring includes, "when Icarus fell, it was spring" and 'awake' (Williams, line 2-3, 8). These words describe spring as the awakening juxtaposes of the world, bringing the conventional idea of death. Generally, springtime is commonly perceived as a period of rebirth, love, harmony, and growth where everything that perished in the winter comes to life. However, the spring leads to the unanticipated Icarus death, at the expense of all-round negligence and rejection by nature and human. Thus the fact to Icarus' death is further adding an ironic tone in the poem.

Structure

The structure of the poem improves its readability and boosts learning activity. The poem dies not bound to any poetic codes of rhythm, rhyme, and other musical aspects. The poem has intently violated the themes of grammar and language. Besides, the organization of the poem is unique in that every stanza contains short sentences with a total of twenty-one lines where each verse has three lines. Also, in the poem, only the first word contains a capital letter. Throughout the poem, there exist incomplete sentences with improper agreement amid the parts of speech where each line consists of no more than four words. The poet illustrates everything from the painting so accurately from the spring season to the Icarus drowning splash. Williams appears neutral regarding Icarus falling as he only puts some imagery to deliver his message and perception. There exist no punctuation marks in the poem; thus, it is read virtually indifferently, with petite expression (Sayakhan 100). The description of this goes along with the lines "this was Icarus drowning and splash quite unnoticed" (Williams, line 20-21). Evading the punctuation mark enables the poet to create more ambiguity hence establishing various possible meanings. Perhaps punctuation is not utilized to show that the poet is indifferent to the Icarus' death the same way the individuals in the painting reacted. Thus, the structure of the poem is short, with 3 line stanzas, each comprising enjambments.

Conclusion

William favored the meticulousness of imagery with sharp and explicit language. He tries to reveal that every individual lives for themselves as sometimes the tragedy and pain people face goes disregarded to the rest of the globe. His poetry is intended to display impersonations as masterful foundations that are to be maintained aloft and heartening to the reader. Through the incorporation of imagery, euphemism, foreshadowing, and structure, he attains an ironic tone that ridicules Icarus' untimely death, deliberating that people perish quickly just as his wings melted due to the sweating of the sun. The author incorporates the utilization of color and light, in which the sun illuminates the paintings giving a new sense of life and warmness. Icarus' death does not have a lot of attention, like the surrounding activity and landscape. Williams’s writes that the globe in which Icarus lives is "concerned with itself" (lines 11-12). Therefore, the people on the land have different feelings regarding this tragedy.

Works Cited

Sayakhan, Najat Ismael. "The use of personification and apostrophe as facilitators in teaching poetry." Journal of Language Studies 1.4 (2019): 98-106. doi:10.25130/lang.v1i4.48. Accessed 11 July 2020

Williams, Carlos William. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Poems.org. www://poets.org/poem/landscape-fall-icarus. Accessed 11 July 2020