How would describe the speaker's worldview? Is it pessimistic, realistic, just indifferent?
Answers
Answer:
a fiery hell, up to their necks in a lake of ice.
Other sources claim the poem was created following a conversation with astronomer Harlow Shapley about the end of the world. The noted astronomer, when questioned by Frost, said that either the sun will explode or the earth will slowly freeze. Take your pick.
Robert Frost, in his own inimitable way, chose both, the poem expressing this dualism in a typical rhythmic fashion, using a modified version of the rhyming scheme known as terza rima where the second line of the first tercet rhymes fully with the first and third lines of the next. This was invented by none other than Dante in his Divine Comedy, so Frost may have borrowed the idea.
In short, both sources sound plausible and resulted in a curious tongue-in-cheek kind of poem, the tone being somewhat casual and understated, whilst the subject matter is one of the most serious you could think of.
If you listen to the video carefully, Robert Frost speaks in an almost offhand way as if saying to the reader - you make your mind up which method (of destruction) you prefer. One or the other is going to happen sooner or later.
First published in 1923 in his book New Hampshire, Fire and Ice is a strong symbolic poem, fire becoming the emotion of desire and ice that of hatred. In essence, the fire is pure passion, the ice is pure reason.
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 favor 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.
Analysis of Fire and Ice
Fire and Ice is one of Robert Frost's shortest poems but gives the reader much to ponder on. Casual in tone, with clichés, it introduces to the reader the profound idea that the world could end in one of two ways, with fire or ice, through desire or hate.
If you listen to the video, read by Frost, it is possible to detect a hint of understatement in his voice. Perhaps a subject of such seriousness needs to be treated with a certain insouciance?
It has that traditional iambic beat running through the mostly tetrameter lines - save for three dimeter - which Frost employed a lot and it's this rhythm that could be said to undermine the essential seriousness of the subject - the end of the world.
Explanation:
Other sources claim the poem was created following a conversation with astronomer Harlow Shapley about the end of the world. The noted astronomer, when questioned by Frost, said that either the sun will explode or the earth will slowly freeze.