An Analysis of the Complexity of the Human Life– Comparing William Carlos Williams’ Landscape with the Fall of Icarus with T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Anonymous College

The complication of the individuated self is one of the central themes discussed during the modernist period. Both William Carlos Williams’ Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock identify the problem of emotional detachment that modernity has brought to people’s everyday lives. Nonetheless, the two poets adopted different approaches to address the issue.

William Carlos Williams’ Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is based on the famous painting, The Fall of Icarus, by the Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel in which Icarus is depicted through two legs sticking out of the sea in a little corner of the whole picture. This subtle and insignificant representation of Icarus drowning points to the main idea of the painting which Williams later illustrates in his poem. In the beginning of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Williams writes, “According to Brueghel/ when Icarus fell/ it was spring// a farmer was ploughing/ his field/ the whole pageantry// of the year/ was awaking tingling/ near// the edge of the sea” (Williams, lines 1-10). Spring symbolizes the birth of many new lives, whereas Icarus’ tragic death creates a great contradiction. As Icarus’ life fades little by little, farmers are...