Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Essay Questions

Why does the poem tell so little of Icarus's story?

The poem purposefully downplays the story of Icarus in order to highlight the farmer's perspective. Icarus's fall and subsequent demise becomes a minor detail in the poem (as it is in the Bruegel painting), thus emphasizing the way that the farmer doesn't even take notice of this seemingly major event. He is too consumed with his work to see this moment. This shift in viewpoint serves the poem to show that the importance of different narratives is almost entirely contextual. Where the farmer tilling his field would seem (from a traditional point of view) less dramatic than Icarus's plight, the poem flips this idea on its head, making the farmer's story the meaningful and detailed one. The poem asks the reader to examine what sorts of narratives are being elevated at the expense of others, and suggests that there may be as much poetry in the farmer's work as there is in Icarus's story.

How does Williams make use of enjambment throughout the poem?

Williams uses enjambment in the poem to generate line-by-line momentum and to make subtle turns at the end of each stanza. While the poem is broken up into seven tercets, each of its short lines connects with the previous one. For example, the ending of the third stanza bridges onto the beginning of the fourth ("near / the edge of the sea"). This keeps the reader engaged throughout and allows Williams to slowly build his imagery, as he moves between the main story of the farmer and the minor subplot of Icarus. This also gives Williams the opportunity to switch focus between stanzas. For instance, there is this turn at the bottom of the sixth stanza, leading into the seventh: "there was / a splash quite unnoticed." The phrase "there was" sets the reader's expectations up for a reveal which leads to the "splash quite unnoticed"—that is to say, Icarus drowning. Enjambment frees Williams up to experiment with form in this manner, while still keeping the reader engaged in the story he is telling in the poem.