In poetry, some words and imagery are thrown together so many times that they lose their edge, their roughness, until they become smooth, familiar, and predictable. Among these words are the figures and representations of Sisyphus and Icarus, rolled out by poets time and time again as they seek to name and describe struggle and failure, ambition and descent. And this has caused them to become fixtures, not just of literature, but of the very way we perceive human effort. Sisyphus, the man who rolls his stone endlessly up the hill. Icarus, the boy who flies too close to the sun and falls. Their ghosts haunt every poem written about toil and hard work, every verse about hubris. They are the footnotes of defeat.
Even in their most direct invocations, they still bear the weight of overuse. Albert Camus, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” concludes, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” This line appears to suggest a sad, resigned acceptance, a man who has found contentment in the eternal cycle of labor. He does not rage against the struggle but accepts it as inevitable, a tired shout-out to the burdened.
Yet, in it’s frequent citation, the quote is ever so often removed from it’s deeper existential context. Camus writes earlier, “The struggle itself towards the height is enough to fill a man’s heart,” to show that the focus is not just on the burden but on the act of pushing, of engaging with the struggle itself rather than looking for a final resolution.
W.H. Auden, in “Musée des Beaux-Arts, in a poem about Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (c. 1558), portrays Icarus as a tragic, almost unnoticed figure. His fall is a significant event, yet met with indifference by those around him; they’re too absorbed in their own lives, oblivious to the tragedy nearby—a representation of our indifference to individual suffering. “In Breughel’s Icarus, for example, how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster.” In the poem, the shepherd continues tending his flock, and the plowman continues his work. The world does not pause for Icarus’s fall. It suggests in a way that our struggles, no matter how dramatic or personal, often go unnoticed by the larger world. For them, “it was not an important failure.” the myth in these hands is not questioned, only reinforced. Icarus still falls. Sisyphus pushes on.
On the other hand, per 20th-century Russian formalism lies the idea that poetry should disrupt expectations and defamiliarize the ordinary. Viktor Shklovsky argued that art’s goal is to “make the familiar strange” (ostranenie), jolting readers out of automatic perception. It’s perhaps because of this line of thinking that we have twisted variations of these myths, to stretch them at their seams, to make them, if not new, at least different. The stone no longer becomes a burden but a companion; the fall is no longer a tragedy but a moment of liberation.
Jack Gilbert in “Failing and Flying” refuses to see Icarus as a failure at all: “I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.” The fall is reimagined, not as punishment, but as the natural arc of ambition, showing that true failure lies not in falling, but in never daring to fly in the first place. He expands on that idea in the following lines: “Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. / It’s the same when love comes to an end, / or when the marriage fails and people say they knew / it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work.” A sort of encouragement in appreciating the attempt more than the outcome. He aligns Icarus’s story with human relationships, suggesting that just because something ends does not mean it was not worth pursuing. Just like love, ambition holds value, even if it does not last forever;
“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”
In a similar manner, in Jennifer S. Flescher’s poem “Sisyphus and the Ants,” the narrative shifts to highlight Sisyphus’s resilience and adaptability. The poem states, “The story forgot to tell us, though, Sisyphus thrived. / He learned to guide his wrists / and shoulder girdles safely to protect himself.” This portrayal emphasizes not exhaustion but the enduring strength and perseverance of Sisyphus, who not only continues his task but also finds ways to thrive within it. Unlike Camus’s interpretation, which finds meaning in the struggle. Flescher suggests that Sisyphus finds meaning in the ability to endure it: “And if the gods came to watch, he would not give them the satisfaction of failure.”
While these variations offer something fresh, they too risk becoming their own kind of repetition. Their twists and new perspectives begin to cycle through the same orbit; Icarus smiling, Sisyphus shrugging. The avoidance of the original myth then becomes its own well-worn groove, and we’re back where we started, rolling the same stone, just painted with different colors this time.
The repetition of these themes can become paradoxical, where the initial freshness and subversion eventually become predictable and worn out. Stephen Dunn’s poem “Sisyphus’s Acceptance” leans into this paradox: “Rote, not ritual, a repetition, which never would mean more at the end than at the start.” In reclaiming the myth, he also deliberately repeats it. The push and release, over and over again. The problem now is not just that these metaphors are overused, but that they have become shortcuts, stand-ins for real complexity. They offer an illusion of depth, reducing struggle and ambition to familiar, prepackaged symbols.
They have become shorthand for complex experiences, easy ways to make a gesture at struggle or ambition without having to create a new language for them. They reduce the vastness of human effort into familiar imagery and make us feel like we have understood something profound when we have only really recognized it.
But there are times when these themes still work. A writer who knows the weight of the metaphor uses it deliberately, not as a crutch but as a doorway to deeper meaning, ensuring it still resonates. Art that does not merely repeat the myth but questions it, reshapes it, and forces it to speak in new ways.
Edward Field’s poem “Icarus” reimagines the mythological figure surviving his fall and assimilating into mundane modern life. Field writes, “He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically, / And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero; / But now rides commuter trains, / Serves on various committees, / And wishes he had drowned.” This portrayal shifts Icarus from a symbol of hubris to one of disillusionment, highlighting the tension between extraordinary aspirations and the banality of everyday existence. Field’s Icarus becomes a commentary on the loss of ambition and the struggle to find meaning within the confines of societal norms
What if Sisyphus, instead of pushing the stone, begins to carve it? What if Icarus, instead of flying toward the sun, is running away from something far worse below? What if his father, Daedalus, watches him fall and does not weep, but nods, knowing that some wings are not meant for safety? There is still room for these myths, but they must be unsettled, disturbed, and made unfamiliar again.
And maybe the hardest part isn’t even bending the old stories, but reaching for new ones. There are other myths, other images waiting to be unearthed. Not every struggle is a stone and not every fall is a winged one. Across cultures, different myths articulate struggle in unique ways. In Yoruba folklore, the deity Ogun, associated with iron, war, and labor, shows perseverance not through endless toil but through constant reinvention. In Buddhist traditions, struggle is often framed as detachment rather than persistence. Buddhism teaches that liberation from suffering comes through letting go of attachment and desires.
Yet beyond these, there are other archetypes that redefine ambition and resilience. Prometheus defies the gods not for personal gain but to bring knowledge, enduring eternal punishment for the sake of others. In West African folklore, Anansi the Spider is a beloved trickster figure known for his cleverness and resourcefulness. Anansi’s tales often involve him outsmarting stronger opponents and overcoming obstacles through wit and cunning rather than brute force. By looking beyond the familiar, we can find new metaphors that reflect diverse perspectives on ambition, failure, and endurance.
There are people who are neither Sisyphus nor Icarus, but something else entirely. They might resemble the flicker of a lighthouse against the darkness, a swimmer against the current, or a tree that sways in the wind without breaking. Language is vast, and art does not need to be a cycle of the same two stars. The sky is full of constellations that haven’t been named. Let the stone roll away. Let the boy fall. And then, let us write what happens next.
