Tynan Portillo presents, featuring the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the best horror stories of the 19th century. Welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Music and narration by Tynan Portillo.

Today’s episode, the poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

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.

Hello and welcome back to The Poe Show, I’m your host Tynan Portillo.

If you’re interested in hiring a voice actor for a project, you can contact me at poeshowpod@gmail.com with your project details, and you can find me listed as an audiobook narrator on ACX for Audible. Be sure to send any questions you have about a story, poem or the podcast in general straight to the podcast by using the link in the description to send an anonymous text message.

Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice was first published in 1920, very soon after the end of World War I in 1918. Robert Frost never served in the War, but he wrote plenty of works to express his experiences with war, like the poem Not to Keep. In that poem, a soldier returns to his wife from war appearing physically fine, just needing some rest and then he’ll be good as new. But as the wife sees something in her husband’s eyes the poem ends with the line, “They had given him back to her, but not to keep.” Robert Frost lived through both World Wars, the Korean War and The Cold War,  conflicts of mass destruction and death and the looming possibility of absolute annihilation from the use of atomic bombs. His feelings on war and whether it was a thing which was all evil or something which was needed to defend justice remained conflicted. He said once about the First World War, “I don’t know whether I like it or not. I don’t think I have any right to like it when I am not called on to die in it.”

Fire and Ice explores the potential of humanity’s ambition and humanity’s hatred. Fire represents the potent and destructive quality of desire, passion and greed; while Ice represents the danger of indifference or total embrace of rationality.

Some say the world will end because humanity’s desires for more and more and more - more things, more possessions, more money, the neverending growth of profits and determination to step on anybody to make more money the next year - will consume them. Others say the world will end due to our moral ambiguity, simply ignoring the problems we are creating for the future. Interestingly, although fire and ice are opposites, they can also go hand in hand. Extreme ambition can drive humanity to ignore dire problems that future generations will have to deal with once the present are dead.

The themes of this poem are parallel with modern political polarization, creating an “enemy” to be enraged by. You know like: “the problems in our society are THEIR fault, it’s THEM who want THIS BAD THING to happen, so you shouldn’t care about what THEY care about and we can’t let THEM win!” It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, that happens. And it corrodes the dignity of political rivalry, ultimately leaving the betterment of our country at a stalemate.

Robert Frost shows that no one is exempt from this corruption though, for the writer states that he has tasted desire as well. We are all prone to the selfish desires of our hearts. The test of our lives is whether or not we choose progress. It is easy to be selfish, destructive and callous to the world. It is hard to be compassionate, kind, and to build. That is the true progress of humanity, that we deny our carnal desires, swallow our hate and pride, and use our developed frontal lobes to choose to make progress. That is how we spare the world of fire and ice.

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That’s all for now, but you’ll hear from me again on the next episode of The Poe Show.