Fire+and+Ice

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 * About the Author:** Born in San Francisco, March 1874. Died in Boston on January 29, 1963.


 * Theme:** the central theme, or rather, assertion of the poem is that human emotions are destructive when allowed to run amok; in can be concluded that Frost intends to enhance a reader’s personal awareness of his or her own emotions and of the consequences of said emotions. On an individual level they can lead to damage on social, psychological, and even physiological levels. Though unfrequently, unbridled emotions—such as those of Adolf Hitler, for example—can destroy entire countries and even threaten to destroy civilization itself. Naturally this poem, published in 1920, does not refer to such a figure in a then future history, but Frost nonetheless recognizes what can happen if people, especially people of influence, succumb to their emotions.

This poem relates to the end of the world by natural or unnatural means, i.e. destruction of our way of life by our own means or by those of time. Mankind could destroy itself through a variety of means, including global warming or toxification of the environment as well as nuclear war. Human means would likely indicate irrationality and uncontrolled emotion. Natural means, which are merely a matter of time or chance, include a meteor striking the Earth (causing dust to enter the atmosphere and resulting in mass extinction on all levels of the food chain, or obliterating the planet altogether, depending on its mass), the Earth being engulfed by the sun when it expands into a Red Giant (though first the surface would be vaporized), or the cooling of the Earth or otherwise occupied human instillation of the Solar System when the sun becomes a White Dwarf.

Going further, this poem can be related to the then nonexistent theories of the Big Crunch and the Heat Death of the Universe, remembering Edwin Hubble’s discovery of redshifted astral masses took place nine years after Frost published “Fire and Ice”. The Big Crunch is a possible end to what the Big Bang began; it states that the Universe will collapse into itself (relating to fire). Yet seeing that the expansion of space is accelerating positively, the Heat Death theory proposes that eventually all energy will turn into heat (fewer and fewer stars, less light, etc.) until the universe will become dark and cold and lifeless (relating to ice).


 * Imagery:** There is some alliteration: “some say”, “world will”, and “favor fire”. Additionally, there are examples of parallelism: “I think I know” and "Some... / Some...". The use of fire and ice as agents of destruction on a planetary scale could even be considered understatement or synecdoche. Fire can destroy, but not an entire world or universe; it could be part of the process, and certainly reminds us of it. Ice too can end human life, but only its characteristics can relate to the death of the planet Earth or the universe itself. Of course, fire and ice can be seen as symbols of human emotion, particularly of desire and hate.


 * Meter:** Here Frost has implemented a freer form than in earlier works; it is a lyric poem of nine lines, an ABAABCBCB rhyme scheme, and alternating between lines of four (2, 8, 9), eight (5, 6, 7), or nine (1, 3, 4) syllables. Lines 2, 8, and 9 can be described as iambic dimeter, and lines 5, 9, and 7 as iambic tetrameter. At first, the lack of a fitting metrical foot to the odd number of syllables seems to make it impossible to assign any meter to lines 1, 3, and 4. However, the natural stresses make it clear that the feet are iambic, with one catalectic (incomplete) foot at the end. Thus, lines 1, 3, and 4 can be described as iambic pentameter.


 * Emotion:** The general tone is one of authority; the speaker assumes he is capable of judging the means by which the world will end. He is less sure of the power of ice (he only “thinks” that he knows enough of hate, a cold emotion) to destroy than the abilities of fire. Even though he has only “tasted” desire (a hot emotion, relating to passion, greed, etc, he seems confident that fire would certainly bring an end to the world. At the end, he leaves off with a very anticlimactic understatement, merely stating that ice would “suffice” in bringing doom upon humanity. This is absurd, making the poem as a whole insightful, provocative, and even humorous.


 * Questions:**

1) In context, hate is considered as what kind of emotion?
 * 1) Hot
 * 2) Cold
 * 3) Favorable
 * 4) Destructive
 * 5) Great

2) What line could be considered as an example of irony?
 * 2
 * 4
 * 5
 * 8
 * 9

3) In context, which of the following words does “great” (line 8) most closely resemble?
 * 1) Impressive
 * 2) Wonderful
 * 3) Important
 * 4) Enormous
 * 5) Terrific

4) This poem can be best described as an
 * 1) Epitaph
 * 2) Epigram
 * 3) Epithalamium
 * 4) Elegy
 * 5) Epic

5) Lines 1, 3, and 4 contain catalectic feet. Considering this, their meter is
 * 1) Anapestic monometer
 * 2) Trochaic tetrameter
 * 3) Spondaic dimeter
 * 4) Iambic pentameter
 * 5) Dactylic heptameter


 * Works Cited:**

Arp, Thomas R. "Chapter Six / Figurative Language 2." Perrine's Literature. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College, n.d. 649. Print. Cummings, Michael J. "Fire and Ice." Cummings Study Guide. N.p., 2008. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. . - - -. "Meter in Poetry and Verse." Cummings Study Guide. N.p., 2006. Web. 1 Mar. 2013. . Hess, Gary R. "Types of Poems." Poem of Quotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2013. . "Robert Frost." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 2013. Web. 29 Feb. 2013. .