Frost’s Fire and Ice - In A Nutshell
"Fire and Ice" is one of Robert Frost's best-known poems, but it feels more modern than
some of his other famous works, like "The Road Not Taken" and "After Apple-Picking."
You get no sense of the quaint New England lifestyle that many people associate with
Frost.
The poem describes a fictional debate between people who say that the world will end in
fire and people who say it will end in ice. The debate is highly symbolic, despite the
claims of a Harvard astronomer named Harlow Shapley who thought the poem was
based on a conversation he had with Frost in which he explained how "life on earth"
would be extinguished either through "incineration" or a "permanent ice age" (source).
Other critics have suggested that the poem was inspired by the Inferno, an epic poem by
the Italian Dante Alighieri. "Inferno" means "a hot place," but Dante pulls a surprising
move by covering the very bottom of Hell in ice. In fact, Satan himself is trapped waistdeep in a huge sheet of ice. This image totally contradicts the view of Hell as a blazing
place where Satan roams around carrying a pitchfork. Dante's point – which Frost
seems to pick up on – is that the very worst people are the ones who use their "cold"
intelligence to commit terrible acts. (To learn more about Dante's version of an icy Hell,
check out Canto XXXII).
"Fire and Ice" was first published in Harper's Magazine in 1920, and it was republished
in Frost's 1923 collection New Hampshire. Robert Frost is one of the most important
American poets of the 20th century. He won thePulitzer Prize four times and was asked
to deliver a poem at President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration.
WHY SHOULD I CARE?
"Fire and Ice" deals with a question that it is on the tip of everyone's tongue right now.
How are human beings going to destroy the planet? Will it be in a blaze of suffocating
heat or "fire," as in global warming? Or will it be in blast of "ice," like a nuclear winter or
the exhaustion of the earth's molten core? Clearly, this poem has "disaster movie"
written all over it. Who says poetry can't be timely?
Except that Frost's poem is not about natural disasters. Or, not entirely. "Fire" and "ice"
are symbols of two different sides of the human animal: the passionate and the rational.
Our "passions" define our animal nature, and our reason makes us humans. We all
know how ferocious a wild, untamed beast can be. But the poem argues that the human
mind and intelligence is an equally dangerous weapon, one with the power to turn the
earth – or at least the parts inhabited by humans – into a cold and uninhabitable
wasteland.
This poem is a textbook example of extended symbolism, and "hot" and "cold" are
symbols that we use every day. Frost's use of symbols is no different from someone who
has just suffered some cruel trick or manipulation and says, "That's cold, man. That's ice
cold."
The speaker brings us into the middle of an argument between people who think the
world will come to a fiery end and people who think the world will freeze. He could be
talking about the literal end of the world, but he's also talking about the power that
human beings have to harm or "destroy" one another.
The speaker's experience with romantic desire has taught him that passionate or "hot"
emotions like love and lust would probably have the power to turn the earth into a big
fireball. But he has also experienced the other extreme, and he knows that colder
emotions like hate have great destructive power. Love gets all the publicity, but hate is
the silent killer. It may not have the same grandeur as the fireball ending, but it'll do the
trick.
Get out the microscope, because we’re going
through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1-2
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.

OK, everyone. Line up. If you think the world will end in fire, stand to the right. If
you think it will end in ice, move to the left. Let's put this to a vote.

The poem begins with this kind of polite difference of opinion. Nonetheless, the
two groups are separated by a line break, to illustrate their disagreement. They
can't even stand to be on the same line!

We don't learn whom exactly takes each side. The two sides are anonymous,
fluid groups of people.

The great Fire vs. Ice Debate is not one we've heard of before. So we must be
dealing with symbols.

In a poem this short, you have to question absolutely everything. Take nothing for
granted.

For example, what does "the world will end" mean? Is the speaker talking in
Biblical terms about the Apocalypse? Or is he imagining natural or man-made
disasters, like whether we'll blow ourselves up or die out in another ice age? Or
does he mean "world will end" in a more personal sense, like the way his world
will end, or your world?

At a literal level, fire and ice are both ways that the human species could be
extinguished. There are almost infinite possibilities for either one to happen. For
example, a giant comet hitting the earth and making it explode: fire. A slightly less
giant comet hitting the earth and creating a huge cloud of ash that blocks the sun:
ice.

Thinking outside of the "natural catastrophe" box, "fire" and "ice" could also
represent different kinds of human emotions. Some philosophers, for example,
have divided the human soul into "rational" and "animal" components, where the
"rational" is cool and deliberate, while the "animal" is hot and hasty.

If you get in a yelling match with one of your friends and suddenly get so angry
that you slug them, that's fire. But if you despise one of your enemies so much
that you make a deliberate, painstaking plan for their downfall, that's ice.

At this point you might be thinking, "Hey, Shmoop, aren't you making this all too
clear-cut? Maybe fire and ice aren't total opposites. Maybe they can exist at the
same time and even interact with each other." At which point we'd have to turn in
our keyboard and hand you the keys to the Kingdom of Shmoop.

The whole "fire and ice" dispute is based on speculation, because nobody has
any idea how the world will end. For such an intense topic, the idea of weighting
options in a rational manner seems strange and even absurd. The speaker talks
about options for the end of the world as if he were holding up different yogurt
brands at the supermarket. ("Hm. Looks like 'ice' has less calories!")
Lines 3-4
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

Maybe our yogurt comparison wasn't so far off, after all. The speaker has
sampled "desire," a "hot" emotion, so he's going to line up with the folks who
think fire will end the world. He knows how powerful it can be.

The word "tasted" implies that he hasn't felt the full brunt of fire's energy – he has
only gotten a small sample, like those little bite-sized portions of food that they
hand out at grocery stores.

To put it another way, think of the character Cyclops from X-Men. Cyclops wears
those sunglasses all the time because they control the energy that shoots out of
his eyes. If he were to take them off permanently, they would burn up everything
around him. He prevents this mass destruction by focusing the energy. The
speaker suggests that we do the same thing with emotions like "desire." We keep
them on a leash so we don't lose control. If conditions arose that caused us to
lose control…watch out.

"Desire" is considered "hot" because it always relates to the body in some way.
The most obvious example is romantic or sexual desire. Sure, love is warm and
fuzzy, but sex, jealousy, and desire can run out of control.

The speaker knows about this unstable side of our "hot" emotions. He has been
around the bend and acquired worldly wisdom along the way. He's a voice of
experience and not just some naïve kid who has only felt puppy love.
Line 5
But if it had to perish twice,

This idea of the world ending ("perish[ing]") twice is complicated. If we don't even
know if the world will end once, why worry about the second time? Would anyone
even be around to see to second ending? If fire is more powerful, why wouldn't
the world just end in fire twice?

OK, take off your Skepticism Hat and put on your Imagination Hat.

The idea seems to be that "fire" beats "ice" to the punch in the first round of the
battle.

Remember that those "hot" emotions are the impulsive ones. If "fire" refers to the
animal side of our nature, then the actions associated with it are instinctual – we
don't think, we just do.

Icy actions require thinking and deliberation. So, we'll see what happens in
Round 2.
Lines 6-8
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great

The speaker has also experienced hate, a cold emotion, and he knows it can
destroy things – namely, the world.

At this point, it becomes even clearer that "desire" is associated with "love,"
because its opposite is "hate."

You'd be hard-pressed to find two emotions more immortal and powerful than
Love and Hate. In the Hall of Fame of immortal adversaries, they're up there with
Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Yankees and Red Sox…

The speaker seems a lot more tentative about his relationship with hate. He was
absolutely certain that he has tasted desire, but he only "thinks" he knows
"enough" about hate. We're in murkier territory with this emotion.

For example, we don't know in what sense he knows hate. Has he only witnessed
hate at a distance, or has he been the victim of hate, or has he been a hater
himself?

His very hesitancy with the topic (what's he trying to hide?) should set off alarm
bells of reader suspicion. Like most people, he has probably experienced several
varieties of hate.

Why is hate an "icy" emotion?

You might think that hate should be red-hot because it is so closely related to
blind anger. But we think he isn't talking about the kind of anger that comes on
you in a fit of rage. We think he's talking about the anger that lingers beneath the
surface, that you turn over and over in your mind.

You've probably heard the phrase, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." The
idea is that, when you take what was originally a hot emotion and allow yourself
to reflect on it in a very deliberate manner, you can come up with the cruelest
response of all. Not to mention, the worst villains in movies are always the ones
who kill and destroy without breaking a sweat or even seeming to care.

The phrase "also great" doesn't tell us anything about the status of ice compared
to fire. So be careful about saying that ice is just as powerful as fire. He doesn't
tell us that. When it comes to destruction, ice is in the same league as fire, but we
don't know who would win a one-on-one cage match.
Line 9
And would suffice.

The last line picks up on the idea that we don't know whether fire or ice is
stronger.

The end of the poem suggests that it doesn't matter which is stronger: both will
do the trick. "Suffice" means to be enough to bring about some effect.

Once you destroy something, it's gone. If you wanted to destroy some document,
setting it on fire would do the job. So would tearing it up into a million little pieces.
But if you set the document on fire and then wanted to scatter the ashes to the
corners of the earth just to be sure, someone would be justified in saying, "Hey,
what are you doing? It's over."

Interestingly, the word "suffice" is a very rational and even lawyer-ly word. The
speaker seems to be demonstrating "icy" thinking here. If you got a little chill up
your spine at the end of the poem, that might be why.