Everyone Suffers

The "human position" about suffering is merely an artsy way of saying that everyone suffers. We all have problems, we all have hardships and trial, but the world goes on. The ploughman has physical hardships, trying to make ends meet, doing his daily job. When Icarus falls into the sea, he is literally facing a failure in his life. Because the ploughman has his own things to worry about, he never looks up. Icarus goes unnoticed. His fall was a trial he had to deal with, just as the ploughman had work to deal with. Often times in life, we feel as if the world should stop because ours has. However, are pains often go without an expression of sympathy from anyone. Auden uses phrases like "the torturer's horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree" and "when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting for the miraculous birth, there always must me children who did not specially want it to happen" to exemplify the unfairness of our individual worlds. The torturers horse, not knowing his masters' disposition, had a scratch (a hardship) which went unseen. The children did not want another birth, and the old people did. There is opposition in all things. That is what Auden is saying. More often than not our sorrows go unspotted from the world because we all have our own. That is the "human position."