The author begins by giving examples of different groups of people, some in hope, some in despair, all in indifference to the feelings of others. He says that suffering takes a human position when people are “opening a window or walking dully along”(4) while around them is some great anticipation or crisis. The fact that the people ignore these types of suffering only enhances the despair and bleakness of it all. He says that while the aged are “reverently, passionately waiting for the miraculous birth”(5-6) there are children who do not particularly care “skating on a pond by the edge of the wood.” (7-8) While the older people are waiting for the birth of some great entity, or perhaps even a messiah, there are kids elsewhere p

Human suffering, or ignoring it when it’s happening to another person, is something that had been around since man first existed and will be around until man exists no longer. W.H. Auden’s poem Mussee des Beaux Arts proves that this is true. It is perhaps that only by the realization that this inherent quality exists within all men that maybe some kind of change could be made, within a person, or within us all.

Auden then uses the image of Brueghel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus as an affective example of peoples indifference in the face of tragedy. The story depicted in the painting is as such: Icarus is given wax wings to escape his island prison, however, he flies too close to the sun and his wings melt, sending him plummeting into the sea and to his death. In the painting there is an angler, a ploughman, and a ship full of sailors, all of whom see the boy fall from the sky. As Icarus’ body begins to sink beneath the black waves Auden notices how the people look away “quite leisurely from the disaster.”(15) There is a bitterness in Auden’s tone that confirms that to him this is truly a heinous act. He sees these people ignoring Icarus’ plight as heartless and stupid, and he means for these people to represent everyone all over the world. He then goes on to say tha

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