The Poem “Fire and Ice”

The poem “Fire and Ice” is a poem written by Robert Frost. This nine-lined poem of Robert Frost reminds me of Armageddon. Robert Frost is using the elements of fire and ice to represent the two strongest and deepest of human emotions. Fire would represent all the passion, lust, desire, and envy while ice represents the cooler and calmer emotions such as humans hate or ambition. Both are deep enough for humans to cause our own downfall. This is one of Robert Frost's simplest poems. In Robert Frost poem he compares two destructive forces which is the fire and ice. In the first two lines of the poem he represents two options of the end of the world, by fire or by ice. He takes the position of fire to desire. This comparison suggests that Frost views desire as something that would consumes and destroys. However, in the next stanza, Frost compares ice to hate. This comparison relates to the reader as something that causes people to be rigid and cold. Also, ice has the ability to compact things and causes them to crack and break. The last lines of the poems affirm that the two elements are equal. Fire or passion, consumes and destroys quickly. While ice or hatred destroys more slowly. The two elements fire and ice are in a never ending conflict with each other. Fire and ice will slowly destroy each other but only with their own demise. This poem is meant to show that perfection can never be obtained. Fire which is passion, and kindness can be seen as the civil rights movement, and ice, or hatred, can be seen as the man who killed Martin Luther King Junior. While it is awful that such a great man was murdered, his legacy and accomplishments still live on. We can now see that while we would like the best of all possible situations, we can still settle for the middle and be better off than before. This is what I believe Robert Frost wanted us to get from his poem “Fire and Ice”. He wished we would take what he had to say and imply it to our daily lives. Especially when we see struggles against good and evil. Now we may not recognize good as fire and ice as evil, but Robert Frost definitely did.

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