The tragedy of mankind is that everyone is doomed to encounter some form of failure. In “The Story of Daedalus and Icarus” Daedalus’ son, Icarus, forgets about his father’s warnings about flying between the sea and the sun and flies too high. Sure enough, the wax that held the wings together melts and he plummets into the sea and drowns. The interpretations of Ovid’s story by Brueghel, Auden, and Williams explain the central idea of a man’s failure. Within Brueghel’s depiction of Ovid’s story, called “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” he portrays how people can be oblivious to the suffering of others. In the painting it is obvious that no one is paying attention to the man who is near his death. Moreover, in “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”
