QuestionDecember 16, 2025

Target Writing Level:Advanced Analyze the following works about the story of Icarus: Pieter Bruegel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'and the following excerpt from Erasmus Darwin's "The Botanic Garden." Write a response comparing and contrasting the two works. Questions to consider: What is the focus of each? How does each work highlight the focus? What is missing from one work that the other incorporates? How does each work draw on concepts from the original myth of Icarus? Write at least 100 words.

Target Writing Level:Advanced Analyze the following works about the story of Icarus: Pieter Bruegel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'and the following excerpt from Erasmus Darwin's "The Botanic Garden." Write a response comparing and contrasting the two works. Questions to consider: What is the focus of each? How does each work highlight the focus? What is missing from one work that the other incorporates? How does each work draw on concepts from the original myth of Icarus? Write at least 100 words.
Target Writing Level:Advanced Analyze the following works about the story of Icarus: Pieter Bruegel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'and the following excerpt from Erasmus Darwin's "The Botanic Garden." Write a response comparing and contrasting the two works. Questions to consider: What is the focus of each? How does each work highlight the focus? What is missing from one work that the other incorporates? How does each work draw on concepts from the original myth of Icarus? Write at least 100 words.

Solution
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Answer

Pieter Bruegel’s *Landscape with the Fall of Icarus* focuses on the indifference of the world to individual tragedy. The central subjects—plowman, shepherd, fisherman—continue their daily work, with Icarus’s fall relegated to the corner, barely noticed. This visual marginalization underscores the quiet cruelty of human society’s detachment from mythic events. In contrast, Erasmus Darwin’s excerpt from *The Botanic Garden* emphasizes the daring ambition and ultimate doom of Icarus, vividly describing the flight toward the sun and the catastrophic plunge. Darwin’s work keeps Icarus central, heightening drama through language and metaphor, while Bruegel’s composition diminishes him in visual importance. Bruegel omits the grandeur and emotional tension Darwin includes, whereas Darwin does not convey the sense of societal indifference that pervades Bruegel’s piece. Both draw on the original myth’s themes—hubris, aspiration, and downfall—but Bruegel filters them through a realist lens of human preoccupation, while Darwin reimagines them through poetic exaltation and moral reflection. Explanation This is an **essay question** requiring comparative analysis of Bruegel’s painting and Darwin’s poem in relation to themes and details from the Icarus myth. Both works depict the fall differently: Bruegel emphasizes human indifference, while Darwin dramatizes heroics and tragedy. The answer should connect focus, technique, omissions, and mythic elements.

Explanation

This is an **essay question** requiring comparative analysis of Bruegel’s painting and Darwin’s poem in relation to themes and details from the Icarus myth. Both works depict the fall differently: Bruegel emphasizes human indifference, while Darwin dramatizes heroics and tragedy. The answer should connect focus, technique, omissions, and mythic elements.
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