Question

what is meant by fire and ice in the poem "fire and ice" by Robert Frost​

Answer 1

Answer:

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.

Note that the longer lines can be read a little quicker than the short, which means a different tempo for the reader at lines 2, 8 and 9.

From those two alliterative opening lines the reader is drawn into the rhetorical argument - fire or ice for the end of the world? These lines are based on mere hearsay...Some say...who says?...experts...the guy on the street, the woman in the bar?

The third line, along with the fourth and sixth reveal the first person speaker, keen to let the reader in on his idea of things. His world view. This is a poem of opinion yes, but opinion brought about by personal experience.

Everyone knows the world will end at some time but no one knows how. This poem posits fire or ice, then fire and ice, as the likely causes of the world's demise. And to bring the idea into the human domain, the speaker links the elements to human emotion - fire is desire, ice is hate - and the speaker has experienced them both.

Delving deeper, if Frost took inspiration from Dante's Inferno, then it's necessary to relate these nine lines of the poem to the nine circles of hell mentioned in Dante's book and to also link the Greek philosopher Aristotle's ethical ideas about human nature, which Dante's book reflects.

Aristotle basically said that to live a positive life the passions had to be controlled by reason, and that humans were the only ones capable of rational thought. In contrast to the animals.

So in the poem fire is desire which is passion, ice is hate which is reason. Those who strayed away from the positive life through reason were judged the worst offenders, ending up in a lake of ice.

Either way, the end of the world is brought about by the emotional energy of humans.

Frost's poem neatly expresses this ethical scenario in a nutshell. It's a sort of chilli pepper in a fridge.

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

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In the poem The fire and ice by Robert Frost

Robert Frost stated

Fire as Desire

Ice as hatred

Robert Frost discuss about the end of the world and how it will end and it ends with a solution that the world would end with fire or ice from which stated that the world will and with the desire to conqueror or the hatred among people