Robert Frost "Fire and Ice" Explication Essay
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost is an amazingly beautiful poem. Only nine simply worded lines that somehow manage to be both meaningful and cruel. The author explains two sides, good and evil, fire and ice with just the right amount of rhyme. He uses vocabulary that is seemingly light, but makes the words feel dark and heavy to the person reading.
The way Frost threaded this poem together was in a way sort of Zen, you read through it and it seems he wants you to picture two totally different scenes and make them connect in the center. This creative poem could make any innocent person think strangely creepy thoughts; fire and ice two very different things with a so called “happy medium”. In the first two lines of the poem Robert Frost clearly states what the poem is about, he says “some say the world will end in fire some in ice.” The first thing you think about is the end of the world, but is that the only meaning to what became a famous poem; of course not. Fire and ice has many different meanings in this poem; it could also mean good and evil, or calm and exciting.
As frost writes on the poem gains more and more meaning the strays away from the first two lines. What if you had the chance, to try a little of each? Would you be more drawn toward good or evil? Sometime before Robert wrote this he clearly went through something that pulled him both ways, he wrote that he had “tasted desire”, meaning that he had done or felt something that went along with “fire” and “evil”, and come out from that believing he understands and belongs with the group of people who favor excitement and fire. Desired is a very pivotal word, it could mean something sweet, but frost hints that it is in a way very dark. Here he writes that he believes he favors living without fear, but what if he had the chance to try it all over again? At this point in the poem the author asks what he would do if he had the chance to start over, he makes it clear that he wishes he could “perish twice” or try again. In knowing “enough of hate” he figured out that there is another choice, that ice is also a great way to go. If Robert Frost’s life, relationship, or dream had to end he now believes fire and ice are like equals, fire burns fast, but ice works slowly to kill.
Now as the poem draws to a conclusion the last line simply states that ice “would suffice” it rhymes in an almost haunting way here in the end Frost’s poem makes I clear that a little of both good and evil is the way to go, “Fire and Ice” opposite, but perfectly despicable…together.
