Question

PLEASE HELP

Read "Musée des Beaux Arts," by W. H. Auden. Then examine the painting titled "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Both Brueghel and Auden refer to the story of the fall of Icarus in their works. How are "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" and "Musee des Beaux Arts" similar?\

A. They take focus away from the water by balancing it with the sky.B. They take focus away from Icarus by including many other ordinary elements.C. They draw focus to Icarus by using his name and picture in the titles.D. They draw focus to the water by indicating that it is very dangerous.

Answer 1

The correct answer is option B: "They take focus away from Icarus by including many other ordinary elements".

The story told in the poem as well as in the painting is the fall of Icarus. In both works, to a certain extent, that is not the main focus. In the painting, for example, Icarus' legs can be seen as he drowns. This is a very small detail compared to the other elements present in the painting that overshadow the situation.