Desire is what led Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. According to him, he has tasted desire and hence he is of the thought that those who favor fireare right and he supports their view. In the third line, the poet comes to his own interpretation of these two terms. Whatever the meanings of fire and ice are, the poet gives a popular assumption of his time. Hence the ice may also refer to the tragedies which Frost had gone through in his life. The other interpretation of ice is the entering of a meteor or any other thing from space which will stop the sunlight and hence, there will be an ice age that will make the world perish.Īccording to CourseHero, Frost’s son died at the age of 4 which was followed by the death of his daughter, sometime before he composed this verse. However, this interpretation does not seem to be the exact meaning of what Frost talks about. First, ice probably refers to the melting of glaciers and the rising of sea level in which everything will sink. Now, ice may refer to different things (as I have read different interpretations of this word on various sites). The other belief is that it is the ice that will destroy the world. People believe that someday, the earth will burst and there will be huge explosions of fire that will burn the world and hence everything will be destroyed. The fire here means the love which is in the core of the earth. Some scientists believe that it is the fire that will be responsible for the destruction of the world. The poet begins the poem by narrating the popular and age-old debate about the two things out of which one will destroy the world.

Part 1 Some say the world will end in fire, PoemĪs discussed above, I will explain the poem sentence-wise.

in the final line, which is the longest, he gives his own thoughts. Now fire and ice mean something deeper and profound. In the second sentence, he metaphorically changes the discourse. In the first sentence, the poet explains the popular debate that is prevailing in society for a long about what will destroy the world. This short poem comprises of nine lines and has a rhyme scheme ABA ABC BCB. He finally concludes that both of these weapons are equally dangerous and will lead the world toward destruction. Meaningįor the poet, fire means the burning desire for material things and ice means coldness that emerges in humans because of their desires and materialistic life. The poet talks about the discourse going on about which of the two things i.e. Fire and Ice by Robert Frost is a short, figurative, and symbolic poem that juxtaposes the scientific assumptions of his time and his own imagination.

Of fire and ice