There are two ways that The Fall Of Icarus is portrayed. The poem Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden and the painting Landscape with the fall of icarus by Pieter Breughel both use the greek myth about the fall of Icarus as their subject however, both works treat the subject quite differently. Some details that Auden uses in his poem to describe the fall of icarus are a large splash, in lines 15 and 16 “The ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry” Also uses details such as “The sun shone as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water” and states that the ploughman turned his head in disinterest because it was not a concern of his. Auden mentions how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster, supporting the idea of it being human nature for people not to care about other’s misery unless it were to be happening to them or effecting their life in some way. In Landscape with the fall of icarus many details differ from Auden’s poem. For example there is no horse in the painting as there is in lines 12-13 “The torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree” Also in Auden’s poem there are dogs going on with their doggy life but in the painting there are no dogs. In Auden’s poem he states “ there always must be children who did not specially want it to happen, skating on a pond at the edge of the wood” In the painting there isn’t a pond for the children to skate on nor are there any children. Overall the central idea of both Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts and Landscape with the fall of Icarus Is that nobody cares about other people’s misery unless it is effecting their own life in some way. A perfect example of that is how close the ship is to Icarus in the painting, yet no one tries to help, and the fisherman is close enough to reach out to him but doesn’t, because once again it does not effect his life.