Poetry: Question About Poetry Content

1.      What is the connection between the world ending in fire or ice?

The poet Robert Frost asks this very human question for the reader to ponder. The poet creates this visual picture of his thoughts of how we would mind the destruction by fire or ice ended the world. Human emotions of fire (desire) and ice (hate) are equally harmful and can easily bring about the “end” of a connection.

2.      What does the fire and ice symbolize?

Fire is directly equated with desire, the kind that kindles antagonism and conflict. The symbolism of fire, along with the denotations and connotations, further add to the meaning of the poem. Another use of symbolism is through the use of the word “ice”. Ice represents hate.

3.      How are two ideas similar and different to Frost (as a poet)?

I think the similarity of the ideas that the poet is using it in a negative sense, because he is uses words like end, perish, and destruction. The word hate is worldly known to have a negative condensation. Violence throughout history is related to desire and hate. Ice is a metaphor for hate. The words apart can be destructive, but putting them together they are lethal. To me this is saying you would have to choose the lesser of the two evils. The two-element fire and ice are in
a never-ending conflict with each other.

The different ideas to poet, the simplicity what makes the poem so hard to interpret. Fire and ice are the complete opposite of each other in the literal sense, they can never exist with each other, you can not have fire and ice (water) exist at the same time without an added component such as oil. These are just some points that I feel strongly about

4.      Why does Frost relate fire to desire and ice to hate?

To be aware the world is going to end and the desire is talking about how we all wish that there is something else after this life and in order to find out for sure if there is something, we will have to die. I think that the poet would rather end "his" world in "fire", beliveing that there is something else to go onto, but dieing in hate, perhaps a war, wouldnt be so bad either. "Hate" of something leads to neglect, and is you neglect your home (or a campfire, again), it will be frozen in "ice", which also "suffices" as a way to destroy something.