Name

: Adinda Arum Damarsari

1701370792 / LA61
Course
: Literary Criticism
(Liberal Humanism)

NIM & Class

Individual Paper

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.
To understand how liberal humanism applied in a work, I chose the poem that I have
analyzed before which is written by Robert Frost entitled Fire and Ice. In order to analyze a
poem using the liberal humanism approach, I need to understand what the poem is about and
find the poems universal truth and relate it to 10 tenets of liberal humanism.
From the title, it could be seen that the poem begins with two opinions about how the
world will end whether its in fire or ice. In the next line (line 3 and line 6), it could be seen
that the speaker relates fire with desire and ice with hate. So, both fire and ice are the
symbols of human behaviors. Therefore, from the title and some lines above, we could see
that there are some universal truth. The first one is that desire and hate are the human emotion
which exist till the end of the world. The second one is the hate could have a big distruction
power (I assume the word great in line 8 as power).
From the explanation above, the first and fourth tenets of liberal humanism is applied
in the poem. The first tenets which is Good literature is of timeless significance is applied
because the two statements or truth in the poem is still relevant until now even though the
poem was written in 1920. The fourth tenets which is Human nature is essentially
unchanging, is also applied because human nature in the poem which is represented by

desire and hateis not changing. In other words, those two human nature will exist until the
end of the world.