Fire and Ice by Robert Frost : Analysis

A kind client asked of me, to analyse this poem for all thee to hear...

The poem reads:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favour fire.

But if it had to perish twice

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

The first thing that comes to mind when reading this poem is that this poem is based around the apocalypse. It literally starts with a divided idea as to how the world will end. However I believe that this poem has a deeper meaning. The way to discover this of course is to link our current knowledge with the ideas portrayed.

We first link the two forms of destruction with the abstract ideas provided: Hatred and Desire. Desire being the burning gluttony in our soul and Hatred our remorse to life's misery.

Next up, we ca look at the tone and rhythm of this poem to link our previous ideas together. The tone when reading this poem may be flat and serious, directly relating the the serious tone of the ideas portrayed. The rhyme scheme is unique as well and as the poem is comprised of only one stanza, it gives the much needed effect to such a short piece of poetry.

The rhyme scheme is as follows:

A B A A B C B C B

We can gather a lot of valuable information from this rhyme scheme by categorising the letter indications into the idea they correspond with. Doing this gives us all the A's going with the idea of desire's flame and B's and C's going with Hatred's ice. This tells us how important these two ideas are to the lore of this poem.

Next up, we can identify the relevance of this poem to the poet. That is, why the poet may have written this piece of narrative verse. The speaker of this poem is contemplating the ways the world can come to a demise. This makes them appear very pessimistic and depressed. At the same time, Robert Frost also showed similar emotions. After being rejected from his first proposal to Elinor White, the love of his life. He too became very depressed and even considered suicide because of it. This is real life proof that this poem represents pessimistic ideas.

So what does it all mean? Well, it's a story about the way pessimistic people think during misery and sorrow. They wish to end it all and erase what causes their sadness. The same way both the speaker of the poem and Robert Frost felt.

Thanks for tuning in and I hope you learnt something from this analysis. Remember, if you have trouble structuring this in your head, there is a note taking template you can use to follow along this interpretation. It is available to download from the downloads strip on the home page.

Written by Viv@ReadersCafe