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Jessica
February 10, 2011
English 102
Assignment Number two
Analysis of “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
In this poem the author is talking about two really powerful and potentially destructive forces in the world, fire and ice. Both of these are two completely opposite elements. I think that the symbol of fire in Frost's poem is representing desire, and passion. Meanwhile the symbol of ice is used to show hate and destruction. Similarly these elements and the emotions that they represent can be what take us to our breaking points.
I believe that Frost is expressing his loss of hope throughout this poem. The tone of the poem is very sad. The reason that I believe this is because he is talking about how he doesn’t care which way his life will end. At one point he goes with fire, but then proceeds to say “But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say for the destruction ice is also great, and would suffice.” The tone of sadness impacts the poem, because it made me feel bad for him, and in return feel more of an understanding as to what he could be going through in this poem.
The central images that were significant in this poem were fire and ice. In the first two lines, we don't yet know that they are symbols. At first it seems like the poem could be about the end of the world, which can be another way to read the poem. But from what I got out of it when the speaker associates fire with desire and ice with hate, it seems that fire and ice are just symbols for different emotions.
The poetic language impacts the poem because it makes it so that there are two ways that you could interpret its meaning. It seems that Frost was very careful when it came to the word choice and word order he used. The beginning of the poem starts off with “some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice”, right away this made me think that the poem was going to be about the end of the world. The poem then goes off into talking about desire being similar to fire, and ice being similar to hate and destruction. Once I read those lines it completely changed how I interpreted the poem. I seems as though the poetic language was carefully set up. I think that he may have been trying to express how he was feeling at the time, without actually saying it.
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