Daedalus and Icarus: The Myth

One of my favorite Greek myths is Daedalus and Icarus, the story brings out an important message; the message that the story teaches is to know your own limits and not to overwork yourself. In the story Daedalus created wings for his son Icarus to allow him to fulfill his dream of flying. The wings though were made of wax and feathers, so when Icarus flew too close to the sun despite his father’s warning, the wings melted and Icarus fell to his death.

I believe that one of the sources that relate to the story is the movie A Spirited Away. Throughout the movie Haku was shown being Yubaba’s apprentice, Yubaba in the movie was shown as a greedy women who would do anything to get her way, so when Haku came to her and asked her if she could teach him magic she put a curse on him to keep him under her control. Haku overworked himself and did whatever he could to please Yubaba causing him to be injured and leading to his own downfall just like Icarus.

Spirited Away Kahaku GIF - Spirited Away Kahaku Haku - Discover & Share GIFs

Though the movie doesn’t show much of Haku’s life I still believe that he is like Icarus with both of them having dreams just like Icarus’s dream of flying and Haku’s dream of learning magic. Both of their dreams led to their downfall as Icarus flew too close to the sun and died and Haku was affected by the control that Yubaba put him under, but the big difference between them is that Haku does not have someone to warn him about the dangers but Icarus does.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s