Edward Field Icarus

Lately, there have been a variety of classic fairy tales that have been renovated to appeal to an audience of the twenty-first century on the big screen. However, such revisions occur not only in movies, but in literature as well. Through the use of literary devices, we have the ability to connect classic tales to the modern world. In Edward Field's poem "Icarus", the author employs imagery and extended metaphor to adapt the Icarus myth to a contemporary setting.

Field utilizes imagery to reveal the peculiar "feathers floating around the hat/[showing] that anything more spectacular had occured/[t]han the usual drowning/[but] [t]he police preferred to ignore/[t]he confusing aspects of the case." Immediately, Fields takes the

While residing in the suburb, Icarus often reflects on his past, "[n]ever dreaming that the gray, respectable suit/[c]oncealed arms that had controlled huge wings/[n]or the sad, defeated eyes had once/[c]ompelled the sun." Here, we see Icarus in a modern business suit pondering his forgotten glory. He used to fly triumphantly above the horizon, conquering the sky itself. Now, however, he experiences "the genius of the hero fall/[t]o the middling stature of the merely talented". Icarus longs to return to his former prestige, but spends hours in his workshop as he "[c]onstructs small wings and tries to fly/[T]o the lighting fixture on the ceiling:/[f]ails every time and hates himself for trying." In his suburban home, Icarus looks up at the ceiling light above him and imagines it to be the sun, lingering over him as Icarus flies with his son, Daedalus, over the ocean. However, Icarus can no longer fly, no matter the wings he builds, and resents his new life. Icarus "had thought himself a hero/had acted heroically,/[a]nd dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero" yet he never imagined how little negligible he would feel, and Icarus soon "wishes he had drowned" with his son,