Question

What do people on the ship do after they see Icarus fall into the sea

Answer 1

Answer:

The people on the ship keep on sailing after seeing Icarus fall into the sea.

Explanation:

The poem Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden contrasts the feelings of those who are suffering and those who are not. People who are not suffering seem to simply ignore and walk away from those who are, as if it's an inconvenience for them to even pay it the slightest attention. To the poem's speaker, artists are capable of capturing such suffering and of representing it in their work.

The painting of Icarus' fall from the sky into the ocean shows precisely that: how those who are safe inside the ship did not care about the boy they had just seen falling into the cold, fatal waters. As we can see it the following lines:

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Answer 2

They continue on as if nothing happened.