Fire and Ice
Fire and Ice
Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
About the Author
• Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His
work was initially published in England before it was published in America. Known
for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial
speech. Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the
early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical
themes.
• Frost was honoured frequently during his lifetime and is the only poet to receive
four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary
figures, almost an artistic institution." He was awarded the Congressional Gold
Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet
laureate of Vermont.
When and why was Fire and Ice
writtten?
• According to one of Frost's biographers, "Fire and Ice" was
inspired by a passage in Canto 32 of Dante's Inferno, in
which the worst offenders of hell, the traitors, are submerged
in "a lake bound with ice. It is also said that the poem was
inspired by the prominent astronomer Harlow Shapley. Once
when Frost asked Shapley how the world is supposed to end,
he replied that either the sun will explode and incinerate the
Earth, or the Earth will somehow escape this fate only to end
up slowly freezing in deep space. Surprisingly, the very next
year Frost published his poem, ‘Fire and Ice’.
Theand
Fire poem
Ice
By Robert Frost
• On the other hand , the speaker equates ice with the emotions
like hatred, coldness, selfishness and rigidity. He believes that
if fire somehow wasn’t enough to destroy the world entirely,
then ice could manage the feat as well. He thinks that ice is
equally dangerous and destructive. It is something that would
chill the world, slow it down, and isolate each individual
enough that the human race simply couldn’t survive it. The
potential of ice will be sufficient to destruct the world. Even
though the speaker tends to believe in the destructive power of
desire, he sees no reason to believe that hate couldn’t end the
world just as easily.
Word meaning:
• Perish: come to an end, die.
• Tasted: experience
• Suffice: be sufficient.
• Great: here powerful
Poetic Devices/ figure of speech:
1 Anaphora: “ some say” repeated in the 1st and the 2nd lines.
• 2. Metaphor and symbolism: ‘Fire’ and ‘Ice’ compared to strong passion and
hatred respectively.
• 3. Imagery: Fire and Ice have deeper meaning. Fire means feeling of burning
desire and ice means coldness of hatred.
• 4. Alliteration: ‘some say’, ‘favour fire’
• 5. enjambment: ‘I think....destruction ice’
• 6. antithesis: two contradictory ideas expressed, “Fire and Ice”.
• Rhyme scheme
aba,abc,bcb
By Anugrah.P
XK