Fire And Ice Analysis: Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ is a viral poem that discusses the end of the world, likening the elemental force of fire with the feelings of desire and ice with the emotion of hate.
It was composed and distributed in 1920, soon after WWI, and weighs up the likelihood of two contrasting apocalyptic calamitous situations addressed by the sonnet’s title components. The speaker accepts fire as the almost certain world-ender of the two and connects it straightforwardly with what the person in question has “tasted” of “desire.”
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In an ironically conversational tone, the speaker adds that ice—which addresses disdain and aloofness—would “also” be “great” as a method of achieving the apocalypse. There are two detailed motivations for the sonnet: Dante’s Inferno, a graceful and scholarly excursion into Hell written in the fourteenth century. The other is a revealing discussion Frost had with a stargazer wherein they discussed the sun detonating or stifling—fire or ice.
Analysis of Fire and Ice
A great deal of thought most unquestionably went into the formation of this sonnet. Fire and Ice are composed as a progression of nine lines, switching back and forth between three rhyming sounds — ABA ABC BCB being the rhyming outline for Fire and Ice. It includes a speaker depicting the apocalypse in their own vision, and it’s to a great extent shortsighted.
Line 1-2
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.”
The initial lines portray the conflict in everyday society on the subject of how the world finishes. From a cutting edge perspective, “fire” and “ice” could well be substitutes for “atomic catastrophe” and “environmental change.” Frost’s utilization of “fire” and “ice,” in any case, is generally an allegorical choice that frees the sonnet up to various types of translation.
Obviously, ice and fire are contrary energies of each other, recommending that the vast majority have altogether restricting perspectives on the end times — all things considered, the world can’t end in ice and fire simultaneously. Ice and fire also address two limits that could cause colossal harm and are fitting representations for harbingers of death on a great enough scale.
Line 3-4
“From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
In these lines, the speaker provides their own opinion- they liken fire with want, proposing that it is equivalent with interests, with ravenousness, with rage. Fire is being utilized as a representation of solid, burning-through feelings like longing. It is a fitting similarity — in a light or a chimney, fire shows an individual the way. It is warmth and light.
Similarly, little cravings are no difficulty and can direct individuals to the things they need throughout everyday life. For an enormous scope, notwithstanding, fire devours and annihilates, thus also wants. The speaker reviews their encounters with a powerful urge and will, in general, accept that it is those sorts of feelings and driving forces that lead the world down its unavoidable way. According to the speaker, the world will end in fire.
Line 5-9
“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
As a nearby inverse to the passionate longings the speaker sees as being so risky, the ice is likewise a worry in their psyche. They accept the world will consume, in one structure or the other, and that would end it — however, if it didn’t end, and the fire wasn’t sufficient, the rest of the sonnet says, at that point, they accept the ice could deal with the accomplishment too.
As an inverse to a consuming fire, a chilling sheen of ice addresses scorn to the speaker. They consider it something that would cool the world, back it off and disconnect every individual enough that humanity couldn’t endure it. The potential for ice “would suffice,” and even though they will, in general, trust in the ruinous force of want, they see no motivation to accept that disdain couldn’t end the world.
Historical Context of Fire and Ice
The time frame between 1913, when Frost distributed his first book of verse, A Boy’s Will, and 1923, when “Fire and Ice” showed up in New Hampshire, was perhaps the wildest decades in all of world history.
In 1914, the heir to the Austrian seat, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was killed in Sarajevo by an individual from a Serbian patriot gathering, a demonstration that launches Europe and a large part of the remainder of the world into World War I.
When the Treaty of Versailles, the last harmonious settlement finishing the conflict, was endorsed in 1919, three incredible European administrations had brought down, and geographical limits had been redrawn all through the world. This helped move the world’s social and social climate, too, moving it drastically away from the earlier century’s qualities and convictions.
Many of the developments that added to the arising social request had effectively happened before in the century. The sequential construction system of Henry Ford changed the job of work and the labour force.
The disclosures of Albert Einstein and Max Planck tested the set up sees the actual idea of the universe. The speculations of Sigmund Freud modified the view of human instinct. The Cubists, Surrealists, and Modernists’ imaginative speculations moved points of view on craftsmanship and its relationship with man and nature. Notwithstanding these elements, the time frame before 1913 fundamentally rotated around the Victorian time estimations.
One significant result of this was a change in the political equilibrium in the United States. The United States didn’t enter the conflict until 1917, after the German Navy obliterated the non-military personnel sea liner Lusitania, murdering 128 U.S. residents.
The resulting public shock empowered Woodrow Wilson to accumulate hopeful help for passage into the conflict. Warren G. Harding, a charming and attractive man, effectively crushed the Democratic applicant by crusading against Wilson’s strategies on a stage that supported a re-visitation of “normalcy.”
He charmed the electors with his guarantee of a simpler, more prosperous future. Harding’s administration, however famous, demonstrated bad. After his passing in 1923, a few significant political embarrassments were uncovered.
Simultaneously, citizens dismissed Wilson’s optimism; the nation turned into a milestone between the powers of restraint and debauchery. In 1919, Congress confirmed the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the belonging or offer of alcohol.
Nonetheless, the change made a lot a greater number of issues than it settled. Implementation got incomprehensible as resistance to the law spread through all degrees of society. Neighbourhood specialists regularly looked the alternate way, either out of hesitance to oppose the local area.
