Fire and Ice

Jeremy Schatten

AP List

Ms. Johnson

Nov. 16th 200

It was the physicist Niels Bohr who said “There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false, but the opposite of a great truth is also true.” Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice is a poem compositing opposites. He uses the metaphors of fire and ice to represent passion and hatred respectively. His ultimate conclusion is that both are equally destructive. Though the poem is short - only nine lines, the narrator who conveys Frost’s message has his own character. Though often disputed, the poem is written from the perspective of a narrator personally experienced in the opposing forces of fire and ice.

Author John N. Serio from Clarkson University maintains that Frost’s narrator is objective and somewhat detached. Serio says “When Frost speaks of hatred, instead of seeing it as an emotion or feeling, like anger, he presents it as a consequence of thought.” Serio goes as far to compare Frost’s work to Dante’s The Inferno. Serio argues “Frost employs a modified tersa rima, the rhyme scheme Dante invented for his Divine Comedy : aba, abc, bcb.” While this is indeed true, it needs to be questioned whether Frost’s work truly mirrors Dante’s Inferno. In his explication, Serio makes the narrator out to be objective, and in doing so is missing a very big concept of the poem.

Frost uses personal language frequently. Not only is the poem told in the first peron, but it frequently makes reference to the depth of experience of the narrator. Lines such as “From what I’ve tasted of desire” or “I think I know enough of hate” illustrate this as well. The poem is suggesting that both passion and hatred are strong enough to bring about the end of the world. At first glance the line “I think I know enough of hate” seems almost as if the narrator is unsure of himself. Upon closer inspection however, it is made apparent that this line is one of many examples of Frost exuding the wry wit this poem is famous for. Taken in conjunction with the line “Some say the world will end in Fire”, it is easy to see how Frost is being almost sarcastic. Deirdre Fagan explains it well. She says ‘ “Some say” is wryly derisive of the sort of light conversation to be had on a topic of such great magnitude. It is also clearly meant to posit the poet as one who filters the impressions of those around him and who arrives at deeper and more more meaningful conclusions.’ Frosts use of the phrase “but if it had to perish twice”, adds to the aura of lightheartedness. Associated content agrees. They say “he says this would happen if the world were to perish twice. It almost sounds like a joke.”

The narrator’s take on the concepts of the destruction of the world are clearly personal, with a breadth of experience alluded to by said narrator. The narrator is even able to make a value judgement. “I hold with those who favor fire.” Only someone with experience in both areas would be able to choose between them, and ultimately declare them equals. “But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate, to say that for destruction ice, is also great, and would suffice.” In Serio’s criticism, he quotes Jay Parini as saying “The poet-narrator seems to have been through the torrid and frigid zones, to have loved and hated.”

The question still remains though, whether the narrator of the poem is Frost himself, or an alternate persona created for the piece. Though one could never deduce for sure, Frost’s own life offers subtle clues into his experiences with passion and hatred. After Frost published his first poem, he was so caught up in self pride that he asked the girl he was seeing to Marry him, a Miss Elinor Miriam White. She denied him, insisting that she needed to finish her schooling. this suggests that Frost did indeed know the utterly destructive nature of passion, as he must have been crushed. They did later marry, exposing Frost, and by extension the narrator, to both sides of love’s pull. Frost also understood the gamut of hatred. Both Frost and his mother suffered from chronic depression after Frost’s father died of tuberculosis. One of Frost’s children died from Cholera. Taking these events into consideration, it makes perfect sense that Frost is well versed in the pangs of passion and hatred. Associated content goes as far to say “By comparing fire to desire and ice to hate, he emphasizes their destruction. This catches the reader’s attention and helps to convey Frost’s meaning in the poem. Frost is also comparing acts of nature to acts of humans.” Frost, through the narrator is essentially saying that though “fire” as love has had more of an impact on his life, and he’d consider it even more destructive than the hatred he’d felt, but that the hatred was so great it too could have destroyed the world. One can work with this conclusion, that because Frost is experienced in the subject of the poem, that the narrator is Frost himself.

Another piece of evidence to support the worldliness of the narrator, is his macabre longing for the world to end. In the poem, he talked of hatred “sufficing”, almost as if he looks forward to it. Fagan insists “The suggestion that the world may end because of desire suggests much about the longings and loneliness of humanity and the constant striving after excess that can eclipse our awareness of the consequences of our actions, particularly those affecting the natural world.” This is much in sync with Associated content’s claim that “Frost is also comparing acts of nature to acts of humans”

Though Frost’s poem is short, it contains several layers of meaning. Fagan says “... while on the surface it is an easy read, it says a great deal more than is at first apparent.” Serio concurs that “the poem is a marvel of compactness...” The length of Frost’s poem is an example of his wry wit. Such a grave topic is reduced to nine lines, some of them fewer than four words. This too illustrates the experience of the narrator. The narrator relates the poem so simply, so matter-of-factly, that his experience is loathe to be questioned.

All in all, despite Serio’s questionable comparison to Dante, the narrator is deeply entwined in his own work. The narrator speaks from experience, from nostalgia. Not from the detached “compression of Dante’s Inferno [sic]” that Serio suggests. The piece has a life of its own, ending with a grand finale. Frost says “I think that for destruction ice, is also great and would suffice.” He is not amending his previous assertion that he “hold[s] with those who favor fire”, but rather creating a more vivid image. Neil’s Bohr would consider Frost’s assertion a “great truth” : both the flames of passion and the freezing depths of hatred are strong enough to bring about the end of the world.