A Man Was Going Down the Road complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun, whereupon the wax in his wings melted and he fell into the sea. This tragic theme of failure at the hands of hubris contains similarities to that of Phaëthon. Daedalus - he was a skillful craftsman and artist. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix and possibly also the father of Iapyx although this
The Silence of the Sirens Sirens. Canonically, Ulysses tied himself to his ship's mast so that he could experience the Sirens without being driven mad and jumping into the sea. He ordered his crew to stop their ears with wax, so that they would not be tempted by the siren song to steer the ship into the rocks on which the creatures perched. In Kafka's version, however, Ulysses puts wax in his own ears, and is then tied to the mast. Kafka's telling asserts that the Sirens' silence is an even more deadly weapon than their song, and further states that the Sirens fell silent