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Robert Frost's Fire and Ice Essays
Robert frost's poetry major themes
Themes in robert frost poetry
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Recommended: Robert Frost's Fire and Ice Essays
The title for Fire and Ice isn’t really talking about opposites, but rather options. Suggestions on what will come. The title is a preview of “the worlds end”. The theme for the poem Fire and ice is depressing. If you really think about it, it sounds like Robert Frost is lonely, which I can understand. A lot of people in Frosts life have either left, or passed away. Based on my knowledge, Frost has lived a sad life. This poem is very melancholy, if you read in between the lines. Frost uses a lot of figurative language in this poem. In the quote, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in Ice,” Frost is saying that in the world there could be multiple outcomes to one solution. Many people think it could go one way, others think it could …show more content…
Ice typically symbolizes hatred. Which means that Frost has had his fair share of hate in life, based on the quote “I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction, Ice is also great. And will suffice.” I mean if he knows enough of it to actually stop and consider the effects of it, because at the beginning of the poem he said the world would end in fire. I can only assume that if hate is ice, then fire is love. If so then when Frost encounters love he must have thought of all the pain it causes and that led him to believe the agony is so great that it could kill. When you love someone you are open to heartbreak. Frost may have had his heartbroken one too many times. In Frosts’ poem when he talks about the world ending, I think “the world” is a metaphor for any, or all, relationships. Frost has been constantly left alone. His life is supposedly ne big heartbreak. So when he created this metaphor he’s saying that outcome of any relationship is just a lot of pain. Whether it ends in love, or hate, your heart will end up getting shattered into a million pieces. Frosts attitude in this poem is morbid and indecisive. He doesn’t know how “the world” will end. He only knows that it will, one way or
The play on words Frost uses is a great example of diction. "Wholly taciturn" when read aloud could be taken as holy silence, but when read you can see he means total silence illustrating gods void. Frost also uses the word stooping instead moving when describing God. " Not even stooping from its sphere..". This one word shows the power of diction to show his negative view on the theme.
In these two poems, Frost does a wonderful job of making it seem, at first glance, like wonderfully simple poems, but after taking a deeper look, one can see the deeper and darker meanings of the poems. Although these poems both deal with the gloomy, unhappy theme of suicide, Frost always leaves the character with hope and life. Neither of the characters in the poem actually commits suicide and both realize that it is not their time yet to leave the world. In one, the man realizes that time will decide when he will die and the other knows he has responsibilities in the world to attend to and take care of before he can go. So, although both people are hoping for death, Frost redeems them by having them take the higher road and leaving thoughts of death for another time.
Accepting change can be both hard and scary. With change comes discomfort, insecurity, and the possibility of negative results. Although younger generations have an easier time adjusting to and accepting the ever-changing world in ways such as technology, education, and what is to be considered ‘typical’, older generations seem to have a tougher time breaking from tradition and giving new things a try. Four authors discuss the difficulty some have of accepting change through poetry, song, and informative articles, and the impact it has on society or an individual. At first their writings may seem unrelated. However, although the formats, stories, and directions are different, there is one thing in which they become strongly unified; the particular pieces of literature all uniquely share a common theme that shows
"Robert Frost: Poems Summary and Analysis." Robert Frost: Poems Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "Fire and Ice" (1923). N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .
Frost uses a religious allusion to further enforce the objective of the poem. Whether Frost's argument is proven in a religious or scientific forum, it is nonetheless true. In directly citing these natural occurrences from inanimate, organic things such as plants, he also indirectly addresses the phenomena of aging in humans, in both physical and spiritual respects. Literally, this is a poem describing the seasons. Frosts interpretation of the seasons is original in the fact that it is not only autumn that causes him grief, but summer.
Frost uses different stylistic devices throughout this poem. He is very descriptive using things such as imagery and personification to express his intentions in the poem. Frost uses imagery when he describes the setting of the place. He tells his readers the boy is standing outside by describing the visible mountain ranges and sets the time of day by saying that the sun is setting. Frost gives his readers an image of the boy feeling pain by using contradicting words such as "rueful" and "laugh" and by using powerful words such as "outcry". He also describes the blood coming from the boy's hand as life that is spilling. To show how the boy is dying, Frost gives his readers an image of the boy breathing shallowly by saying that he is puffing his lips out with his breath.
The heart of Frost's poem is a picture, which is described in the octave. We are introduced to three creatures the narrator happened to come across: "a dimpled spider, fat and white" (line 1), a white flower, and, held up by the spider, a white moth. Each creature is introduced separately, but all three are later on mixed together in the speaker's eyes, to demonstrate the rarity of their assembly. Carter refers to this description as ironic, ironies that nature presents to man. He sees the irony in the fact that the three creatures are described in a way that one wouldn't depict them normally, and their association with innocence. The spider is dimpled and fat, implying the sweet innocence of a young child, and it's unusually white. The flower is a heal-all, chosen specifically and ironically to invoke images of healing, of medicine. In the poem, however, the heal-all is responsible, in a way, to the moth's death. And like the spider, the usually blue or purple flower is white. The unusual whiteness i...
When receiving hatred or detachment one will often be given the ¨cold shoulder;¨ hatred is a ¨cold emotion¨ and it is only fitting that Frost would associate it with a world ending in ice. Hate has the power to end more than just the world; in fact, the world is most likely a metaphor for an individual's goals. This is proven by Deirdre Fagan of Bloom's Literature when she states, ¨Frost is not imaging an end to the world in general but rather seeing a broader scope of endings… in things closer to the human heart, such as relationships or love affairs.¨(Fagan). Hatred is powerful enough to end and individuals world; it has the power to end hopes, dreams, and even relationships. Hatred is often the first thing to occur when thinking of destruction, yet
Frost demonstrates that what he feels inside is far more vast than even the stars. Edward Hirsch states it best when he writes, "He knows a desolation inside that can match and even outdo any desolation that exists apart from him." Hirsch also notes how the very last line of the poem reveals the poem's title. When one reads the title of the poem this time around, one has a very different sense of the meaning. The very worst "Desert Places" are within the speaker and ultimately Robert Frost.
Although this poem also is connected with nature, the theme is more universal in that it could be related to Armageddon, or the end of the world. Even though this theme may seem simple, it is really complex because we do not know how Frost could possibly relate to the events leading to the end of the world. It is an "uncertain" and sometimes controversial topic, and even if everyone was certain it was coming, we do not know exactly how it will occur and when. Therefore, how did Frost envision this event? Is he portraying it in a religious context, a naturalistic one, or both? The last line (14) speaks of God putting out the light, which brings out a religious reference, but the bulk of the poem deals with nature entirely. Physical images of water, clouds, continents, and cliffs present a much more complex setting than the simple setting in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or the yellow wood in "The Road Not Taken."
Frost uses nature as an image that he wants us to see or a metaphor that he wants us to relate to on a psychological level. To say that Frost is a nature poet is inaccurate.
...us hate through the symbols of fire and ice. The narrator chooses fire over ice because it’s the most relatable for them and is, in his or her mind, preferable to the hate and coldness of ice. The narrator in “The Road Not Taken” also makes a decision based on how the choices presented relate to them. They chose to be an individual and not to shape their life around someone else’s decision. “Fire and Ice” is, at a deeper level, also very different from “The Road Not Taken” because it presents two specific choices that both lead to the same end while “The Road Not Taken” opens up the possibility for endless paths and decisions with an unknown result. Regardless of where the poems guide the narrator, Frost makes it clear that our decisions affect who we are, but also opens up speculation about what it would be like had we taken different turns. It’s impossible to know.
Nature is an important theme in every frost poem. Nature usually symbolizes age or other things throughout Frost’s poems. In lines 5-10 it says, “Often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells.” This demonstrates how nature can sometimes symbolize something. Also in lines 29-33 it says, “ By riding them down over and over again until he took the stiffness out of them, and not one but hung limp, not one was left for him to conquer. He learned all there was to learn about not launching too soon.” In lines 44-48 it says, And life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open. I’d like to get away from earth for a while.”
First, in the poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” there is a lot of nature expressed. Frost’s very first sentence already talks about the woods. Whose woods these are we don’t know. Also, in the poem he states that the narrator likes to sit and watch the snow. He is also a nature lover. In the second stanza Frost refers back to the woods. He must also like ice, because he brings ice and cold up a lot in his poems. Once again Frost brings ice up when he mentions flake and cold wind.
Frost uses nature as a reflection of human experiences; just like humanity it can have seasons and life cycles. He uses different scenes to depict a certain mood for readers to step into the psychological happening of a man. The idea of how seasons change, Frost compares it through the life cycles that humans encounter. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that nature is not Frost’s central theme in his poetry; it is about the relationship that man has with nature in which can be seen from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “The Road Not Taken”, and “An Old Man’s Winter Night.”