Q1: There are many ideas about how the world will ‘end’. Do you think the world will end someday? Have you ever thought about what would happen if the sun got so hot that it ‘burst’, or grew colder and colder?
Everything that lives, dies. Nothing is permanent, except impermanence. There are at least 10 different ways the world could end, like asteroid impacts, solar flares, war, economic collapse, pandemics, pollution, exploding sun, and many more.
In 100 trillion years from now, almost everything in the universe will be frozen to absolute zero. Any of these scenarios may result in the end of life on Earth, but something like that happening in our lifetime is highly unlikely.
Q2: For Frost, what do ‘fire’ and ‘ice’ stand for? Here are some ideas:
(greed, avarice, cruelty, lust, conflict, fury, intolerance, rigidity, insensitivity, coldness, indifference, and hatred)
For Robert Frost, ‘Fire’ represents greed, avarice, lust, conflict, and fury, while ‘Ice’ represents intolerance, cruelty, rigidity, insensitivity, coldness, and hatred.
Q3: What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? How does it help in bringing out the contrasting ideas in the poem?
The rhyme scheme of the first stanza of the poem is A, B, A. The second stanza is rhymed as A, B, A, B, A.
The lines with the same rhythm have the same idea, and then the rhythm changes to convey contrast. In the first stanza, the first, third, and fourth lines end with the words ‘Fire’, ‘Desire’, and ‘Fire’ again. The second stanza rhymes twice with ice and suffice, and hate with great.
Thus Robert Frost has brought out the contrasting ideas in the poem via this rhyme scheme.
