"Flight 063" by Brian Aldiss - Analysis

Essay by lapricaA+, November 2007

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The poem “Flight 063” by Brian Aldiss compares the business flight 063 to Icarus’ grand flight. Aldiss shows a different side of Icarus, showing the bright side of him, his flight, rather than about his great fall. While talking about Icarus’ flight, Aldiss talks about corporate men flying high over the Arctic Circle, without a care in the world about flying up in the sky, having it be a normal part of their lives, unlike Icarus, who only flew once. Aldiss tries to say that one should reflect on the good things in life instead of just the bad and to make the best of life.

The diction used to describe Icarus’ flight and Flight 063 shows the difference in the style of flying that they are using. “Why always speak of Icarus’ fall?”(1). Well, everyone always remembers the bad things that happen in life, and the only good things remembered are those that impact the whole world.

There is a poster somewhere that says, “When I do something good, nobody remembers. When I do something bad, nobody ever forgets.” That poster shows how everybody dwells on the bad, but Aldiss is showing that you should remember the good as well.

“The everyday was lost in his ascent” (25-26) shows that when Icarus was flying, everything normal went away during “his cliff-top jump, The leap of heart, the blue air scaled his glorious sense of life Imperiled” (21-24). Icarus was doing what no other man has done- fly up high into the sky. His glorious flight into the sun left his “sense of life” gone, just wanting to fly closer to the sun, becoming a beautiful thing. Yet “[w]hy always speak of Icarus’ fall?”(1) when his flight was so much more.

The allusions used to describe Icarus’ fall embellish on...