Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice,” by the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), is typical of
this writer’s work in many ways, including in its clarity and wit, as well as
in its plain sentence structure, use of rhyme, and use of meter during a
period when all three were often not in fashion.
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Throughout the poem, Frost uses iambic meter, a kind of rhythm in which odd
syllables are unaccented but even syllables are stressed (as in
re<strong>bel</strong>). Iambic meter is perhaps the most common meter in
all English poetry, partly because iambic rhythms come closest to the rhythms
of normal, everyday speech. Many of Frost’s poems are deliberately intended
to seem colloquial, relaxed, and common in the ways they move and sound,
and “Fire and Ice” is no exception. Even the title seems plain, straightforward,
and lacking in mystery. The title also accurately foreshadows the subjects of the
work. Frost makes an implied promise in the title and then fulfills that promise
in the poem. From the title alone, we don’t know exactly what he will do with
the ideas of “fire and ice,” but we can be confident that those topics will be
examined in some way. The title is not meant to trick, deceive, or be merely
clever.
The poem opens by presenting the opinions of others before the speaker
presents his own (1-2). Yet the opinions of others are conflicting and
contrasting, and so the speaker creates some momentary suspense: which
alternative will the speaker endorse (if either)? Will he make a clear choice?
Will he offer a third or fourth possibility? Or will he (as in fact he does)
somehow endorse both alternatives? At first the speaker seems to endorse the
idea that the world will end in a massive blaze of fire (4-5). Then, however, he
seems to endorse as well the alternative idea that the world will end by being
frozen in ice (5-9). Part of the wit of the poem, in fact, depends on its
pronounced sense of whimsy: the speaker takes a potentially very serious
subject and treats it with clever humor, especially in the final two lines. It is as if
he doesn’t really fear the kinds of destruction he imagines: the days of total
destruction of the earth are well in the distance, if they ever come at all. The
poem begins by seeming to raise a serious issue, but then it ends by making
light of its whole basic premise. Instead of offering us profound wisdom on a
weighty and intriguing metaphysical dilemma, the speaker offers us a wry joke.
This joke is all the more whimsical because of the very brevity of the poem.
Yet the text’s tone is not entirely whimsical. The speaker confesses to having
felt both the “fire” of strong “desire” and the “ice” of destructive “hate.” These
confessions, especially the latter, imply his fundamental honesty.
Paradoxically, his willingness to admit to feeling hatred makes him seem all the
more admirably trustworthy. Yet his confession also suggests that hate is the
kind of destructiveness we truly need to worry about. The world, if it ends, will
end sometime in the distant future and in a way that no one can confidently
predict. In the meantime, however, hate will cause much more genuine
destructiveness in the lives of real people than will some imagined apocalypse.
Without seeming at all moralistic (in fact, while seeming precisely the
opposite), the poem encourages us to think about the past, present, and
future destruction wrought by hate rather than worrying about how the
physical world might eventually end in some entirely imagined future.
Thus, although the speaker by the end of the poem seems almost callously
indifferent to the particular method by which the world will be destroyed, in
some ways he also seems quite wise. Rather than worrying about an event
that he and his readers will probably never actually experience, he subtly
reminds us of the kind of destructiveness—hate—that is with us (and often
within us) every single day.
The central idea
The central idea of this poem is that regardless of how it happens, humanity is
going to destroy itself through its own vices; moreover, this destruction is so
inevitable if we do not change anything that it is of no use to even get upset
about it. The speaker reports that some people say that the world will \"end in
fire,\" which he equates with \"desire.\" This could be desire for land, for
power, for resources like oil or water, to make another country more like our
own: all reasons that we might go to war, employing \"fire\" with gunpowder
and weapons and so forth. Some people, on the other hand, say that the world
will end in \"ice,\" which the speaker equates with \"hate.\" This could be the
hatred of people who are unlike ourselves because they are a different race, a
different religion, a different ethnicity, and so on: all reasons that we might
allow another country or group to suffer through our hate. We might ignore
their struggles and allow them to perish, and someday the same could happen
to us. \"Fire,\" then, is fast, while \"ice\" is slow, taking its time, and so the
speaker says that he agrees with people who say \"fire\" will be responsible for
our demise. However, he ends the poem with an understatement that
underscores its irony: ice, or hate, would more than \"suffice\" to destroy the
world, as it is just as destructive as fire or desire it just takes longer.",