Analysis of Robert Frosts Fire and Ice Essay - 1087 Words

Analysis of Robert Frosts Fire and Ice For Robert Frost, poetry and life were one and the same. In an interview he said, One thing I care about, and wish young people could care about, is taking poetry as the first form of understanding. Each Robert Frost poem strikes a chord somewhere, each poem bringing us closer to life with the compression of feeling and emotion into so few words. This essay will focus on one particular poem, the meaning of which has been much debated due to the quantity of words used, or the lack there-of. There have been many readers of Frosts poem Fire and Ice, thus being†¦show more content†¦Dantes vision of Hell was cone shaped, made up of increasingly tight circles. Fire was used occasionally in tormenting the sinners throughout Dantes travel into Inferno, until the ninth ring was reached. Upon entering the ninth ring, a comparatively blameless giant helped Dante and Virgil into the pit. Torrents of wind had a group of sinners, giants, frozen into a solid lake of ice. A three headed demon, Lucifer, at the center of the lake, was causing the sinners, and himself, to be frozen in place for eternity by the frenzied beating of his wings. The understated opening two lines in Frosts poem, Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice, at first seem merely to suggest the biblical and scientific predictions about the end of the world: an apocalyptic holocaust or a new ice age. However, as figurative representations of desire and hatred, fire and ice embody the very system of Aristotelian ethics Dante employs in arranging The Inferno: Sins of reason are worse than sins of passion. Frost associates fire with theShow MoreRelatedRobert Frost s Writing Style1589 Words   |  7 Pages Robert Frost once said, â€Å"The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion† (Robert Frost Quotes). This same kind of thinking opened the door for metaphorical poetry that helped to show the poets transparency. His love for the social outcast and the struggles of his life are exhibited greatly in his poems. Robert Frost helpedRead MoreEssay on Robert Frosts Life and Accomplishments1244 Words   |  5 Pagesdowns, Robert Frost said this quote. Most of his poems already shared his message, that life is not as easy as it may first appear to be. He used the simplicity of nature and vernacular speech to give his poems a casual mood, though underneath they display a much deeper meaning of life. These poems help to show people just some of the difficult things that will be faced in life, despite everything done to prevent them from happening. In particular, his poems â€Å"Nothing Gold Can Stay,† â€Å"Fire and Ice,† andRead MoreAnalysis Of Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, By Robert Frost778 Words   |  4 PagesRobert Frost is a great American poet that mastered the art of eloquently imprinting his readers with an overarching idea, or theme, through his use of symbolic language, precise picture painting, and metronome rhyme and meter. Frost addresses many different themes across his poems, but sometimes has similar methods of displaying his themes; three of the most prominent are the crossroads of a decision in â€Å"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,† the battle between desire and hate in â€Å"Fire and IceRead MoreCritical Analysis of Fire and Ice2011 Words   |  9 PagesCritical Analysis of Fire and Ice One said, Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. Four time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, teacher, and lecturer, Robert Frost quoted this. Frost was born in 1874 and died in January of 1963. He lived in New England for practically his whole life, only moving to England for a short time to pursue his writing career in which he wrote many popular and oft-quoted poems. In his poem, Fire and Ice, Frost usesRead MoreEssay about The Dark Side of Humanity Exposed in Robert Frosts Poetry991 Words   |  4 PagesHumanity Exposed in Robert Frosts Poetry Robert Frost is often referred to as a poet of nature. Words and phrases such as fire and ice, flowers in bloom, apple orchards and rolling hills, are all important elements of Frosts work. These ‘benign objects provide an alternative way to look at the world and are often used as metaphors to describe a darker view of nature and humans. In Frosts poetry, the depth is as important as the surface. The darker aspects of Frosts poetry are often portrayedRead MoreRobert Frost : A New England Poet3698 Words   |  15 PagesRobert Lee Frost Known for being a New England poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26th, 1874. Born to a New England father William Prescott Frost Jr. and a Scottish mother Isabelle Moodie who moved to the west coast from Pennsylvania after marriage (Bailey). Both his parents were teachers and poets themselves, but his father later became a journalist with the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (Bailey). Frost spent 12 years of his life growing up in San Francisco, untilRead MoreStudy Guide Literary Terms7657 Words   |  31 Pages AP Literary and Rhetorical Terms 1. 2. alliteration- Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. The following line from Robert Frosts poem Acquainted with the Night provides us with an example of alliteration,: I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet. The repetition of the s sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line 3. allegory – Where every aspect of a story is representative, usually symbolic