Fire And Ice By Robert Frost Analysis

As one of the most iconic American poets, Robert Frost’s work has stood the test of time. Though born in California, Frost moved to New England at age eleven and came to identify himself as a New Englander. That self-identification would become a staple of his later works as he would invest “in the New England terrain” and make use of the “simplicity of his images” (Norton Anthology, p. 727) accompanied by uncomplicated writing to give his poems a more natural feel. Frost’s poems were generalized by certain types: nature lyrics, which described a scene or event, dramatic narratives or generalizations, and humorous or sardonic works. His widely anthologized poem “Fire and Ice” falls between the categories of nature lyrics while also being somewhat …show more content…
11) In this case fire symbolizes the heat of passion and desire while ice is symbolic of the cold detachment of hatred. There are two contradicting ideas as to the inspiration behind “Fire and Ice”. The first, found to be noted yet dismissed, comes from astronomer Harlow Shapley, who claimed that Frost published the poem in 1923, a year or two, after he had discussed with Shapley the latter’s thoughts as to how the world would end by which Shapley replied that it would either be incinerated or fall into a permanent ice age. The second, and widely accepted, explanation is that Frost was inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, specifically a passage in Canto 32 of Inferno. The style, structure, and theme are found to be “a brilliant, gem-like compression” of Dante’s work that “presents a much more profound distinction between the two extremes of love and hate.” (The Explicator Volume 57, Issue 4, 1999). The proof of this theory lies, as stated before, in the style, structure, and theme of the poem. In Inferno, Dante separated hell into nine circles according to the sins committed and their corresponding punishments. Frost’s poem in turn is composed of nine lines and “employs a modified terza rima, the rhyme scheme Dante invented for his Divine Comedy: aba, abc, bcb” (The Explicator Volume 57, Issue 4, 1999). Similar to Inferno, Frost uses the first-person narrative in his poem, like Dante did when he named his narrator Dante and placed people from the author’s real life in the circles of hell. Following suit the poem takes after Dante thematically as well. It reflects Dante’s system of ethics that he used when dividing and classifying the circles in hell, which stems from Aristotle, who believed that the sins of logic and reason