I Think We Do The Character Of Icarus An Injustice In How We Tell His Story. We Always Talk About The

I think we do the character of Icarus an injustice in how we tell his story. We always talk about the foolish young man who couldn’t be patient as he fled captivity and disobeyed the one direct order his father gave him. Youth is brash and cannot wait as it charges ahead too fast into ambition, ultimately leading to its own demise.

But that is not how I see Icarus. When I think of the story of Icarus I see a man who had been beaten down by everything. His father was a widely respected genius, the most brilliant architect, engineer, and inventor in the world, and he was his son. He lived his life in laboratories, likely always being whipped into shape by his father as kings and princes came to visit. Icarus is always in the background of the stories, we never see him until the story of the Minotaur with his father in a prison cell. But he was there, he was there and he wanted to get out. He wanted to do something, feel something, live his own life rather than merely pull at the shirttails of Daedalus.

And then imagine, if you can, if you were there building the wings with your father. They must have been huge to carry all the weight of a full grown man or boy. Think of lining all of those feathers, melting the wax down and placing one down right after the other. Imagine looking up at Helios’ light and knowing soon you would reach up to the heavens and taste the air that only birds have known.

Icarus fell in love, he became determined. He got a spark in his eyes and he knew what he wanted. His father warned him, go too fast, too hard and you’ll burn up. Get too close to the sun and the wax will melt, plummeting you into the sea. But of course he had to try. Every generation builds onto the backs of their parents, trying to get a little bit further, a little bit higher, a little bit better.

When they sprung from the prison Icarus soared into the air like a hawk born to it. Finally he was free of the prison cell and the lab, finally he was moving about and tasting something new of his own. He flapped harder and harder, like a runner reveling in the pain of his muscles crying out against the trials laid before them. He could feel his body crying out as his muscles were for the first time put to use. And he flew to the sun.

“Slow down!” Daedalus cried out. “Don’t get too close,” he said, but Icarus wasn’t listening because he was going to show him, he was going to show everyone. He looked into the eyes of Helios and Apollo and he wanted nothing more than to put his hand to theirs. He flew higher and harder and came closer to their light. This is what his life was created for, and he didn’t care whether he lived or died because the living was simply in the doing of the thing. It wasn’t about success, it was about the effort, and so he flew higher.

And then the wax began to drip, the feathers began to drift, and Icarus began to fall. Daedalus’s calls turned to screams of horror. He had warned him, tried to stop him but Icarus cared nothing at all for surviving if it came at the cost of never feeling alive.

Icarus began plummeting toward the waters and he turned one last time to look on the face of Helios. His golden light reached down as Icarus reached up, and for a moment it was as though he was holding his hand and his body was on fire with all of the sun’s burning glory.

When the waters consumed him, I like to think there was steam kicked up from the fire of his skin. The steam screamed out on contact and rushed out over all the waters, until all of Crete and the waters surrounding it was covered in dark clouds and rain began to fall. Icarus touched the sun, losing all he had in the pursuit of that one desperate goal, and when he achieved it the sun no longer shone the same way. He made a discovery that was only his to make, not his father’s or anyone else’s. That drive, that zeal, that need to chase something even when you know ultimately it will kill you to run that hard…that is the true legacy of Icarus, to my mind at least. And I wish that we told the story like that.