Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

Bruegel's painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," is often discussed for the way it draws attention to the ordinary work of the peasants in the scene and casts Icarus' tragic plunge into the sea as an inconsequential mishap in the scheme of daily life. But rather than draw a contrast between Icarus' airy exploits and the peasants' earthly endeavors, I think it points up a similarity among them: that the townsfolk, like Icarus, are concerned only with their own affairs. They are all engaged in some kind of labor- plowing, sailing, climbing, fishing. And it is on their own work, their own daily travails, that each one is focused, not because any one's work is more important than another, but because it is for his own lot that each man is responsible. To one is given a field, to another water, to another the skies. And if one should fall in the course of his affairs, be it due to pride or insolence or for striving after a beautiful dream that we condemn only because it could not be realized in the end, so be it. So will we all lay down when our work is done-- either because it is complete, or we are no longer equal to it-- and everyone else will do as they must, as Robert Frost noted when he said said:

No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.