Fire and Ice: ncert solution class 10

Thinking about the Poem

1. 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?

Ans: It is a fact that what exists today will surely be disappeared tomorrow. We don’t know when the time will come to witness the end of the world. Yes, I, like others, think that the world will come to an end one day. If the sun gets very hot, in other words, if the sun gets angry the world will have to be burnt on its natural funeral pyre. Nothing will exist on this planet, I mean everything (living, non-living) will automatically be burnt to ashes. Everybody on the globe will be cremated in the same way.

If the sun grew colder and colder, the whole world would turn into a burial ground, because everybody would be frozen and completely covered in the coffin made of ice. So it is quite clear that the world will be brought to an end either by fire (anger) or ice (hatred)

2. For Frost, what do ‘fire and ice’ stand for? Here are some ideas:

Ans:  Fire:- greed, conflict, avarice, fury, intolerance, lust, rigidity

          Ice:- coldness, cruelty, insensitivity, indifference, hatred

3. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? How does it help in bringing out the contrasting ideas in the poem?

Ans: The rhyme scheme of the poem is

     a b,

     a a,

     b c,

     b c,

     b

Here, in the poem, different ideas of destruction are displayed(expressed) in different rhyme schemes. So one can say that the rhyme schemes of the poem contrast the ideas of annihilation.