Fire and ice
The speaker brings us into the middle of an argument between people who think the world will come to a fiery end and people who think the world will freeze. He could be talking about the literal end of the world, but he's also talking about the power that human beings have to harm or "destroy" one another.

The speaker's experience with romantic desire has taught him that passionate or "hot" emotions like love and lust would probably have the power to turn the earth into a big fireball. But he has also experienced the other extreme, and he knows that colder emotions like hate have great destructive power. Love gets all the publicity, but hate is the silent killer. It may not have the same grandeur as the fireball ending, but it'll do the trick.
Lines 1-2
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
• OK, everyone. Line up. If you think the world will end in fire, stand to the right. If you think it will end in ice, move to the left. Let's put this to a vote.
• The poem begins with this kind of polite difference of opinion. Nonetheless, the two groups are separated by a line break, to illustrate their disagreement. They can't even stand to be on the same line!
• We don't learn whom exactly takes each side. The two sides are anonymous, fluid groups of people.
• The great Fire vs. Ice Debate is not one we've heard of before. So we must be dealing with symbols.
• In a poem this short, you have to question absolutely everything. Take nothing for granted.
• For example, what does "the world will end" mean? Is the speaker talking in Biblical terms about the Apocalypse? Or is he imagining natural or man-made disasters, like whether we'll blow ourselves up or die out in another ice age? Or does he mean "world will end" in a more personal sense, like the way his world will end, or your world?
• At a literal level, fire and ice are both ways that the human species could be extinguished. There are almost infinite possibilities for either one to happen. For example, a giant comet hitting the earth and making it explode: fire. A slightly less giant comet hitting the earth and creating a huge cloud of ash that blocks the sun: ice.
• Thinking outside of the "natural catastrophe" box, "fire" and "ice" could also represent different kinds of human emotions. Some philosophers, for example, have divided the human soul into "rational" and "animal" components, where the "rational" is cool and deliberate, while the "animal" is hot and hasty.
• If you get in a yelling match with one of your friends and suddenly get so angry that you slug them, that's fire. But if you despise one of your enemies so much that you make a deliberate, painstaking plan for their downfall, that's ice.
• At this point you might be thinking, "Hey, Shmoop, aren't you making this all too clear-cut? Maybe fire and ice aren't total opposites. Maybe they can exist at the same time and even interact with each other." At which point we'd have to turn in our keyboard and hand you the keys to the Kingdom of Shmoop.
• The whole "fire and ice" dispute is based on speculation, because nobody has any idea how the world will end. For such an intense topic, the idea of weighting options in a rational manner seems strange and even absurd. The speaker talks about options for the end of the world as if he were holding up different yogurt brands at the supermarket. ("Hm. Looks like 'ice' has less calories!")
Lines 3-4
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
• Maybe our yogurt comparison wasn't so far off, after all. The speaker has sampled "desire," a "hot" emotion, so he's going to line up with the folks who think fire will end the world. He knows how powerful it can be.
• The word "tasted" implies that he hasn't felt the full brunt of fire's energy – he has only gotten a small sample, like those little bite-sized portions of food that they hand out at grocery stores.
• To put it another way, think of the character Cyclops from X-Men. Cyclops wears those sunglasses all the time because they control the energy that shoots out of his eyes. If he were to take them off permanently, they would burn up everything around him. He prevents this mass destruction by focusing the energy. The speaker suggests that we do the same thing with emotions like "desire." We keep them on a leash so we don't lose control. If conditions arose that caused us to lose control…watch out.
• "Desire" is considered "hot" because it always relates to the body in some way. The most obvious example is romantic or sexual desire. Sure, love is warm and fuzzy, but sex, jealousy, and desire can run out of control.
• The speaker knows about this unstable side of our "hot" emotions. He has been around the bend and acquired worldly wisdom along the way. He's a voice of experience and not just some naïve kid who has only felt puppy love.
Line 5
But if it had to perish twice,
• This idea of the world ending ("perish[ing]") twice is complicated. If we don't even know if the world will end once, why worry about the second time? Would anyone even be around to see to second ending? If fire is more powerful, why wouldn't the world just end in fire twice?
• OK, take off your Skepticism Hat and put on your Imagination Hat.
• The idea seems to be that "fire" beats "ice" to the punch in the first round of the battle.
• Remember that those "hot" emotions are the impulsive ones. If "fire" refers to the animal side of our nature, then the actions associated with it are instinctual – we don't think, we just do.
• Icy actions require thinking and deliberation. So, we'll see what happens in Round 2.
Lines 6-8
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
• The speaker has also experienced hate, a cold emotion, and he knows it can destroy things – namely, the world.
• At this point, it becomes even clearer that "desire" is associated with "love," because its opposite is "hate."
• You'd be hard-pressed to find two emotions more immortal and powerful than Love and Hate. In the Hall of Fame of immortal adversaries, they're up there with Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Yankees and Red Sox…
• The speaker seems a lot more tentative about his relationship with hate. He was absolutely certain that he has tasted desire, but he only "thinks" he knows "enough" about hate. We're in murkier territory with this emotion.
• For example, we don't know in what sense he knows hate. Has he only witnessed hate at a distance, or has he been the victim of hate, or has he been a hater himself?
• His very hesitancy with the topic (what's he trying to hide?) should set off alarm bells of reader suspicion. Like most people, he has probably experienced several varieties of hate.
• Why is hate an "icy" emotion?
• You might think that hate should be red-hot because it is so closely related to blind anger. But we think he isn't talking about the kind of anger that comes on you in a fit of rage. We think he's talking about the anger that lingers beneath the surface, that you turn over and over in your mind.
• You've probably heard the phrase, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." The idea is that, when you take what was originally a hot emotion and allow yourself to reflect on it in a very deliberate manner, you can come up with the cruelest response of all. Not to mention, the worst villains in movies are always the ones who kill and destroy without breaking a sweat or even seeming to care.
• The phrase "also great" doesn't tell us anything about the status of ice compared to fire. So be careful about saying that ice is just as powerful as fire. He doesn't tell us that. When it comes to destruction, ice is in the same league as fire, but we don't know who would win a one-on-one cage match.
Line 9
And would suffice.
• The last line picks up on the idea that we don't know whether fire or ice is stronger.
• The end of the poem suggests that it doesn't matter which is stronger: both will do the trick. "Suffice" means to be enough to bring about some effect.
• Once you destroy something, it's gone. If you wanted to destroy some document, setting it on fire would do the job. So would tearing it up into a million little pieces. But if you set the document on fire and then wanted to scatter the ashes to the corners of the earth just to be sure, someone would be justified in saying, "Hey, what are you doing? It's over."
• Interestingly, the word "suffice" is a very rational and even lawyer-ly word. The speaker seems to be demonstrating "icy" thinking here. If you got a little chill up your spine at the end of the poem, that might be why.