Question

"Musee des Beaux Arts" by W.H. Auden

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.



Pieter brueghel's "landscape with the Fall of Icarus" and W.H Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" both address the fall of Icarus. How else are the two works alike?

A. Both have spooky environments and supernatural elements.
B. Both leave out realistic details, focusing more on a general idea.
C. Both use sensory details to express a silly tone.
D. Both include ordinary events such as a man plowing and animals wandering.

Answer 1

D. both include ordinary events such as a man plowing and animals wandering. i just finished the question for that answer and got this.

Answer 2

The answer is:

D. Both include ordinary events such as a man plowing and animals wandering.

Both works make reference to everyday activities. For example, "Musee des Beaux Arts" by W.H. Auden, mentions people eating, opening a window, walking and skating among those who suffer. While Pieter Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" depicts a ploughman working on the land and a ship, who might have seen or heard Icarus' fall from the sky.