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“Nice Does Not Mean Good”

im not gonna try to say the traditional interpretation is "wrong" per se, because that's not how stories work in general and its especially not how myths work in specific, but i struggle to imagine a boy who grew up in captivity just to serve as an additional chain on his father being suddenly overcome with a lethal bout of ambition

what seems much more plausible, more human, and thus more tragic, is the idea that having grown up watching the birds go where they please and being warned away from the edge, lest he die in the waves, he had a deeply ingrained association

up is freedom

down is death

so when daedalus warned him equally against flying too high so the sun wouldn't melt the wax and flying too low so the surf wouldn't soak the feathers, one warning was felt more strongly than the other

it's easy to see the social function of the story. if the gods punish hubris, kings may and must do the same; too much ambition is a flaw, and it is death to seek to rise among your betters. across the millennia, this lesson remains in the story

but what if instead of chasing the sun, he was fleeing the waves? what if he was so desperate to avoid the thing he feared that the very act of avoiding undid his ability to avoid it in the first place? what if he was so afraid of drowning that he drowned after all?