Fire and Ice
“Fire and Ice” is one of the many poems by Robert Frost. This piece is one of the better in his voluminous collections. It is a bi-level poem that compares two sets of opposing worlds. The impact that the meanings of these worlds have is distended by the understatement at the end of the piece, which is entirely reflective of the piece. The essence of this piece is in the compression of a sinister order and the possible chaos that “the heat of love or passion and the cold of hate,” can draw to the core of humanity. Frost warns of the potential destruction that fire or ice can hold in their extremities. It is as if this omnipotent speaker stands at the event horizon of ultimate anti-virtues, peering down at both the wake and aftermath. He seemingly stands unmoved in the universe, infinitely testing the limits of the soul with subtle force. Connectedness is the key to the central idea of this poem, and abstract analysis makes what is symbolic, concrete. Though fluctuations in the interpretations are expected due to personal differences, there are the basic facts that cannot be denied.Two essentially different forms are apparently placed as opposing facets at the beginning of this piece, and an incongruity is drawn . . .
Desire has caused men to kill others for things that they may want. Both poems incorporate Aristotelian ideals, most of which are aligned with his Nicomachean Ethics, where human reason is distinguished from other life forms. Fire and ice do not share the same characteristics. The alliteration of “favor fire” adds to the emphasis of this avenue of inquiry. There it is noted that “sins of reason are worse than sins of passion:” It is probable that the cone-like shape of “Fire and Ice” masks that of Dante’s Inferno; the worst of the sins are at the bottom. There are presented two choices for them to decide on, and they are the only possible ones. The speaker has noted a personal relation between himself and desire, giving the view that he is an authority on the ills of desire. When “Some say the world will end in fire, /Some say in ice. This is where the incongruity of the dueling literal forms clash, because ice does not consume as fire does. Fire is a plasmatic substance that can increase in heat by the consumption of certain basic elements. Figuratively, desire burns from within; it agitates a person’s essence and destroys ethical will. Hate hardens a person against anything that is rational in the same way that ice hardens an object making it impenetrable. Neither of them being great, they are indeed ailments that afflict the world entirely. It leads humans to do things that are in other ways undesirable. Hate and desire are the means to an end, and an unpleasant end at that.
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