Most people know the poem “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost. It is pretty famous. But do most people know the meaning of this unique poem? What does Robert Frost mean when he writes “if the world had to perish twice?” Although it is short, “Fire and Ice” is a puzzling poem filled with words that hold a meaning that we have to unlock.
In the poem, Frost is the narrator and he is speaking to the readers. The issue that Frost discusses is if the world will end in a blazing fire or in freezing ice. Based on the poem, Frost believes he would perish by fire because in verses 3 and 4 he wrote: From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But in verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 Frost wrote: But if it had to perish twice, I think I know
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Ice is being rhymed with twice and suffice, even though suffice does not exactly rhyme with ice. The “-ate” part is rhymed with hate and great.
The only alliteration that can be found in this poem is in verse 4 when Frost writes “favor fire.” In verses 1 and 2, he writes “some say” which can also be considered an alliteration. An assonance I think I’ve found is “I hold with those who favor” because of the repeating “o” in the words.
This poem is typical of the poet’s style because Frost writes a lot about human nature and compares people to nature itself. He judges people and society as a whole. He also uses a lot of literary devices in his poems like metaphors. Frost describes nature in beautiful ways in his poems and “Fire and Ice” is just like the rest of them. It isn’t a departure of common themes.
Frost affects the tone through word choice because he uses the word “perish” to give emphasis of the world vanishing. Instead of using words like disappear or leave, he uses perish because it gives the poem a stronger meaning. He also uses the word “destruction” to give the poem an intense feeling. By using this word, he makes the poem deeper and stronger than it already is.
This poem matters because it talks about how humans are ruining the world. The fire, or human desire, will take over because humans are becoming greedy and selfish, fulfilling their own desires even if it means the world falling apart. The ice, or hate, will take over
Frost?s poem delves deeper into the being and essence of life with his second set of lines. The first line states, ?Her early leaf?s a flower.? After the budding and sprouting, which is the birth of nature, is growth into a flower. This is the moment where noon turns to evening, where childhood turns into maturity, and where spring turns into summer. At this very moment is the ripe and prime age of things. The young flower stands straight up and basks in the sun, the now mature teenager runs playfully in the light, and the day and sunlight peak before descending ever so quickly into dusk. The second line of the second set states, ?But only so an hour,? which makes clear that yet again time is passing by and that a beginning will inevitably have an end.
It is written in first person, which is revealed in the first line of the second stanza by the speaker saying, “I see”. There are five lines in each stanza, and there are four complete stanzas. Each stanza follows an ABBAA rhyming pattern. Frost uses personification and imagery in this poem to bring Love and Thought to life as characters rather than simply ideas. Love is personified as a woman, and Thought as a man. This follows the idea that women are stereotyped as being more emotional beings, while men are stereotyped as being more intellectual
The poetic techniques were symbolism, imagery, and tone. Symbolism is the most powerfully used technique due to the fact a good number of lines located in this poem is used to signify a certain object or idea related to our life or today’s world. Imagery in the sense that you can visualize the path, the yellow wood, the undergrowth, the divergence; it is all made very vivid. Frost did this throughout; you know trying to stimulate the reader’s mood using one’s senses. In this poem, imagery permits the reader to imagine the scene that this poem takes place in resulting in an enhanced understanding of the theme. The tone Frost’s work presents is an insecure attitude which allows the theme to be brought out due to the fact the theme relates to a dilemma in one’s life. These techniques strongly aid in the revealing of this specific theme.
I was thinking that Frost wanted to basically put a question on our minds, If you had to choose a way to die would you choose fire or ice? In lines seven through nine, "To say that destruction ice is also great and would suffice". To me this is saying you would have to choose the lesser of the two evils. Weighting the pros and cons of the two. Asking which one is better for you, a cold slow death or a hot slow death. But in the end of the poem Frost is saying the no matter which one he picks they are both going to give you the same results, death.
Robert Frost takes our imagination to a journey through wintertime with 
his two poems "Desert Places" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". These two poems reflect the beautiful scenery that is present in the snow covered woods and awakens us to new feelings. Even though these poems both have winter settings they contain very different tones. One has a feeling of depressing loneliness and the other a feeling of welcome solitude. They show how the same setting can have totally different impacts on a person depending on 
their mindset at the time. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas and diction but they are not straightforward poems.
Last stanza of the poem talks about the emptiness that is so overwhelming that even when Frost looks up to the sky, all that he could see or feel is still loneliness and emptiness. But then Frost mentions that the emptiness or loneliness that he fears the most isn’t the one that exist on
Frost also uses the trees in this poem to represent a way to get away from the cares and trials of life on Earth. He talks of getting away and coming back to start over as if climbing “towards heaven”. He desires to be free from it all, but then he says that he is afraid that the fates might misunderstand and take him away to never return. This is like most of us today. We want to go to Heaven, but we don’t want to die to get there.
Frost has a compelling way of writing the poem, in the beginnings of the poem there is a lot of metaphors and descriptions of the setting and the saw and the boy. Once the boy is injured
Frost uses rhymed iambic pentameter, a favorite style of his, to create a steady flow and represent the first manifestations of winter. Iambic pentameter, in terms of style, is about as far as you can get from Mary Oliver’s free verse. As the amount of syllables in a line is constant the Frost much change his pace with much different strategies. He does this by switching from multisyllabic words to monosyllabic words. He does this by stressing words at different points in a line, creating a more hurried pace. He also uses some internal rhymes to the same effect. Mostly, Frost’s poem achieves the same mimicry of winter by focusing on the soundscape of the poem. He uses almost entirely soft vowels and he mostly avoids harsh consonant sounds. This sets up the peaceful, quiet feeling of a new winter The only time that harsh consonants are used is intentionally, when he is referring to the harshness of winter in old age. The stressed rhyme words in this section are “break”, (13) “take”, (17) and “ache”(21). Frost bends a strict poetic form to his will and creates the feeling of a wintry day and makes changes to the internal structure of the lines to vary this
Firstly, the poem “Fire and Ice”, written by Robert Frost, uses tone and poetic language in order for the reader to understand that the poem is about two opposite things being able to equally destroy us. In the poem, the lines that read, “From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire” the poet is using fire as a symbol for desire. This explains that the things that we desire most have the ability to destroy us. Additionally, the lines that read, “I think I
Although this poem also is connected with nature, the theme is more universal in that it could be related to Armageddon, or the end of the world. Even though this theme may seem simple, it is really complex because we do not know how Frost could possibly
In this poem the first literary element that Frost uses is imagery. The use of imagery gives his readers a deep
Frost to save his son from his disease, to the inevitable death of the young boy in the poem.
“For what I’ve tasted of desire I favor those who favor fire”(Frost) This line in the poem pictures a world that could end in fire because of hate much like how a family can be ripped apart from hate. Since from the time the memory starts children hear and see everything ad they do remember but when it comes time later in life to finally see why you believe in this in the first place it all goes back to that first
The great debate of whether the world will end in a fiery ball of destruction or a frozen wasteland has baffled the minds of many people. A man named Robert Frost has written a poem called "Fire and Ice" that describes his thoughts on how he would prefer to leave this world. Upon reading this poem, the reader can derive two distinct meanings of fire and ice; one being of actual fire and ice destroying the world, and the other having symbols for the fire and ice, such as fire being desire or passion and ice being hatred and deceit. Although this poem is one of his shortest poems with only nine lines, it is also one of the most famous works that he has ever created.