[For] epigraphs to The Ice Age, Drabble chooses to quote a long selection from the famous passage in Milton's Areopagitica that begins "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep …" and to follow it with some lines from Wordsworth's stirring sonnet on Milton. The title of the novel is a metaphor for the economic and social "freeze" of 1974–75, during which most of its events take place, the novel focusing on Anthony Keating…. Anthony muses about the "terrible times we live in" and "the sense of alarm, panic, despondency which seemed to flow loose in the atmosphere of England." For Anthony, at this point, such musings are certainly understandable, but the author's voice supports him without equivocation. Instead of qualifying Anthony's point of view, Drabble uses its intensity as typical, gains complexity by anatomizing all the various responses...