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Comic Heroism and the Scope of Fire

Catherine Helen Palczewski

Lang Hall 326

University of Northern Iowa

Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0139

Palczewski@uni.edu

(o) 319/273-2714

(f) 319/273-7356

biographical data: Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Director of Debate, Affiliate Faculty in Women's Studies, University of Northern Iowa. The essay is drawn from a progressive paper project the author completed as part of teaching Rhetorical Criticism in the Spring of 2001. I completed all the assignments in the class along with the students. When students distributed their papers for peer review and grading by me, I also distributed my papers to all the students. I would like to thank the class members for their helpful feedback throughout the process.

Abstract: During the summer of 2000, the western U.S. burned. By mid-August, sixty to seventy wildfires had scorched 750,000 acres in eleven states. On August 30, NPR's Morning Edition broadcast "A Tale of Heroism," the story of David Long, a lone firefighter who saved two homes in an isolated rural Washington community. Using Kenneth Burke's writings, this paper advances a theory of comic heroism. In tragic heroism, the act and scene are magnified upward. Instead, here, a series of human mistakes combined with natural conditions to create a scene in which an individual simply does what he is trained to do and, in the process, saves (not the world) but two homes and a school. In a comic frame, heroism resides in the daily surviving of others' mistakes and in the daily doing of what one does.

Comic Heroism and the Scope of Fire

During the summer of 2000, the western U.S. burned. By the middle of August, sixty to seventy major wildfires had scorched nearly 750,000 acres in eleven western states. Over 20,000 firefighters worked to contain those fires at a cost of about $8,000,000 a day. Yet, even as they fought existing fires, lightning and human carelessness ignited new ones. Even before the end of the summer, it was clear that this was the worst fire season the U.S. had experienced in 50 years. By the end of August, over seven million acres would burn and fighting the fires would cost local governments, states, the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior in excess of $1,200,000,000.

Drought, high winds, population growth, deadfall, federal budget cuts, and past policies of fire suppression combined to form a flammable mix that allowed the wildfires to rage out of control. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman blamed the fires on a "perfect storm" of tinderbox conditions: high winds and forests thick with fuel (qtd. in "Fiery Words" 10). The end of the fires would not be seen until November, when winter rains arrived. In the face of this wall of fire, stories of helplessness and loss continually played across the evening news and in national magazines and papers (e.g. "Cost"; Lorch & Matthews; Morganthau; Proctor; "West's"; and "The West").

Not only did a general sense of helplessness permeate coverage of the fires, but reports noted a helplessness particular to firefighters. A Newsweek story declared: "This year has all the makings of a tragedy" because "[f]rontline crews complain they are dangerously understaffed and ill equipped" (Lorch and Matthews 58). In many ways, the fires seemed unbeatable and the firefighters beaten.

With this backdrop of helplessness against the fury of fire combined with the ongoing struggle to place blame, National Public Radio's (NPR) Morning Edition show, one of the premiere radio shows in the nation, broadcast a story. On August 30, 2000, "A Tale of Heroism" told the story of David Long. According to Renee Montagne's lead-in to the story, "As dozens of fire crews battle fires across the country, a lone firefighter on vacation chanced upon an emerging burn and helped save two homes in an isolated community in rural Washington" ("A Tale"). A lightning strike had ignited the fire in a remote corner of a Native American reservation while local residents were away at a county fair. Because no one was aware the blaze had started, no other fire crews were present. Alone, Long struggled against the power of fire. As I listened to the radio, the story literally cast chills up my spine, and continues to do so even as I replay it in the wet cold of a wildfire-free, Iowa winter.

At first listen, the story is simply a tale of heroism. However, the coverage provided by NPR raises some interesting questions about the stylistic telling of such stories, and about the way in which the story takes substance from the larger circumference of the summer's events and humans' history with fire. The summer was one in which Americans watched the toll of acres burned mount daily, and along with it the human pain stemming from lost lives and homes.

In some ways, the scope of the story's scene and the scope of the story's agent pull in opposite directions. Long as an agent is magnified as a hero, yet the scene of the fire is a limited one, confined to one fire in one corner of one state. The confined scope of the story almost makes the fires, and the firefighters' actions against them, comprehensible. In many ways, this story reduces the entire burning of the west to the fighting of one unknown fire in one corner of Washington while it condenses a summer-long struggle to save millions of acres into a twenty-four hour struggle to save two homes. In order to explore the function of magnification and reduction, I rely on the writings of Kenneth Burke, particularly his work on reduction and scene in A Grammar of Motives (Grammar) and magnification and heroism in Attitudes Toward History (Attitudes).

In addition to the magnification and reduction of the geographic scope of the scene, fire offers a constantly enlarging and reducing antagonist. Fire moves. It spreads. It retreats. It consumes. It grows. It sleeps at night. It acts as though it is alive. And, because it has figured prominently in cultural understandings of power, fire offers a particularly dangerous enemy agent to fight, even as it defines the scene in which the struggle takes place. In fact, part of the NPR story's appeal seems to stem from the way in which it participates in archetypes of rescue and danger. In many ways, the story is yet another example of male heroism in the face of a female force: mother nature as the fire goddess.

Using this story as a paradigmatic example, I explore what a comic understanding of heroism would entail. Although much of Kenneth Burke's writings on heroism are tied to a tragic frame, it seems plausible that one can find heroism in the comic. Instead of magnifying the scope of the scene and the action in order to generate heroism, a heroism that is bound to find demise in its hubris, this story seeks to generate a heroism located in a reduced scene and finished with an incomplete action: one small corner of one fire during a summer of fires is fought, and even when the fight appears to reach its conclusion, it is clear that the victory is, at best, temporary since fire can never be vanquished. My argument is that "A Tale of Heroism" presents an instance of comic heroism, where even in the midst of a reduced scene in which evil is ambiguous and the enemy engages in motion, not action, heroism can emerge.

Stylistically, the story's structure and voice magnify Long's heroism, even as its conclusion minimizes it. Contextually, the story functions as a synecdoche (see Burke "The Four Master Tropes," Grammar) for the summer's fires and for humanity's struggles against events beyond our control. Finally, as the broadcast tells the story of one man's struggle against fire, it also retells the story of humans' age-old struggle against fire in such a way that it both reifies archetypes of masculinity and femininity even while it makes clear the masculine is not all that powerful.

In a world filled with increasing cynicism and complex morality plays, it seems as though a story as simple as this one, in both its presentation and substance, deserves attention. The text's worthiness for criticism stems from both its narrative structure and what it can tell us about the dramatic struggles of humankind in general, and a man in particular, to control fire. After reviewing the generic demands of the radio medium, and how the story conforms to the typical dictates of a narrative, I then focus on how the context in which the story appears influences the way it is perceived. Given that heroism is intimately linked to the scope of the scene, an understanding of the scene in the story, as well as how the story fits within the larger drama of the summer's fires, is essential. After exploring the use of magnification and reduction in the story, I then turn to the stylistic elements, particularly its structure, to discuss how the other elements of the drama feed a comic understanding of heroism.

Drama on News Radio

Broadcast journalists are faced with numerous expectations from an audience. In most cases, radio stations must present programming that brings in a market for advertisers. Although not faced with this particular pressure, public radio still must respond to the formalistic expectations held by listeners who tune in. Stories must be interesting in order to capture and maintain an audience.

The Missouri Group's textbook about writing for print, broadcast and online media, Telling the Story (Brooks et al.), outlines the formal expectations of a radio story. Broadcast news content is selected on the basis of its timeliness, so that it creates a sense of urgency; its ability to provide information, not explanation; its audio impact with on-the-scene reporting; and its ability to integrate real people into the story, thus humanizing it (Brooks et al. 245-6). Particularly for broadcast news, stylistic elements also are central to success. Immediacy is created by the use of present tense, a conversational style is created by short simple sentences written in the active voice, and clear tight phrasing is essential since listeners cannot re-read for clarification.

NPR, a broadcast system that prides itself on providing more than the superficial news coverage of commercial outlets, often violates these expectations. Instead of stories lasting no more than sixty seconds, they often last four to ten minutes. In fact, "A Tale of Heroism" lasted four minutes and fourteen seconds. Additionally, one finds that standards of immediacy are expanded, given NPR's commitment to providing context for stories. Time is stretched to encompass more.

In addition to the generic formal expectations that audiences bring to stories, the content of this particular story also presented challenges to the reporter. The summer's news had been consumed with stories of fires. From the beginning of June to the end of August, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN averaged 177 stories, almost two a day. NPR, itself, aired 26 stories on the fires in August alone. In many ways, the stories of the fires, from Florida to Washington, had lost their "news" appeal. No longer were the fires interesting or new; instead, they were expected and routine. Given the news' need for immediacy, to cover what is new, reporters faced difficulties with each additional fire story they had to present as news.

This Drama on National Public Radio

The story opens in classic narrative style (see Foss 399-407; Campbell & Burkholder 24), setting the scene and introducing the characters. Bellamy Pailthorpe, the reporter and narrator of the story, introduces listeners to the lead character: David Long, "a forty-four year old" former fire chief. The scene is "a narrow country road near the Yakima Nation Indian reservation in south central Washington." Tension is introduced to this scene when Long spots smoke. However, before any new characters are introduced, we are told he watches this smoke for an hour.

Susan Price (one of the people whose home would be saved) is introduced into the story as she describes meeting Long and together watching the "boiling" smoke on the hill behind her home. As she and Long watch, she tells the reporter what Long told her: "Lady, if you have anything you want to save, you have approximately thirty minutes at the most." As Price readied to leave with her animals, Long suited up and tried to call 911, but "the phone lines went dead." With this, the impending crisis of the story is introduced. Long must fight the fire, and he must do so alone.

Pailthorpe then reports that Long saw the fires heading to a ranch a quarter-mile away, where 77-year-old rancher, Frances Wattenbarger, was trying to dig his own firebreak. Despite his efforts, the fires were coming ominously close. Long's voice comes on the radio as he describes how he grabbed the old man by the shoulders and said, "As God is my witness, I will save your house, but you've got to go now." Tension mounts in the story as Long appears to be readying to fight a losing battle. This tension is magnified further when Susan Price's voice returns to the story, describing what she saw in her rearview mirror as she drove away: Long, alone, and 30 feet beyond him, "just a huge wall, a solid wall of fire." He is one man, trying to save two homes from a fire that has engulfed thousands of acres.

The story starts to draw to a resolution when Pailthorpe reports that Long proceeded to fight the fire for over 24 hours, with only occasional help from local firefighters who had their own farms and ranches to worry about. Long's voice returns to the report, when he notes, "my arms were throbbing, my back was killing me, my feet hurt" but that he knew "[t]o stop would have been the end." To stop would have meant the loss of the Wattenbarger place.

The story closes with a description of the end result of the fire, a new scene with 77,000 acres of Washington prairie scorched, except the "Wattenbarger house, an adjacent school building and Susan Price's cottage," all saved by Long. Once the scene after the fire is described, Price tells us she tried to thank Long, who was "covered in soot from head to toe and, you know, coughing from the smoke and the ash, and with, you know, the cold drink in his hand, just guzzling like a man that'd been fighting fires for hours." With this image of Long in our minds, Price reports Long's simple response: "But Susan, it's what I do." The story ends with the reporter's voice informing us that Price's house is now like "an eerie untouched island in a sea of black ruin" and that Long is resting at his sister's home in Seattle and, when recovered, is planning on joining the firefighters in Montana.

This narrative structure addresses the taken-for-grantedness of fire stories as it offers a "vicarious sharing of integrally related experiences" so that the listener may come to an "understanding of a . . . situation" (Campbell & Burkholder 24). The story gives us insight into the immensity of the fire, both because of Price's response and because of what Long told Wattenbarger. We meet a character who chooses to help those who are not known to him. And, we are given insight into solitary struggle. We experience the fire, as Price did, as Wattenbarger did, and as Long did.

The story works, not only because of its structure, but also because of the way it appeals to dramatic themes that weave throughout our collective psyche. Like the fairy tales of old, a lone knight (Long) in shining armor (or, in this case, auto) arrives to save the damsel in distress (Price) and an elderly, yet fiercely independent, man (Wattenbarger). A hero emerges, but he is a hero in a scene of uncertain dimension. Although the drama may appear typical, the hero is not.

Comic Heroism and the Magnification and Reduction of Scope

Central to Burke's writings on heroism is an attention to magnification and reduction, both in terms of agents (heroes) and in terms of scene (context). But, in order to understand how agent and scene interrelate in the specific instance of heroism, it helps first to understand how both figure generally in Burke's theory of dramatism. Both agent and scene are part of his central theory of dramatistic criticism, which he defines as "a method of analysis and a corresponding critique of terminology designed to show that the most direct route to the study of human relations and human motives is via a methodical inquiry into cycles or clusters of terms and their functions" ("Dramatism" 445). As such, a dramatistic approach attempts to track a pentad of five terms: act, agent, agency, scene and purpose with the goal of "calling attention to them . . . to show how the functions which they designate operate in the imputing of motives" ("Dramatism" 446).

A pentadic analysis encourages critics to examine how a story presents a particular drama, in other words, how a story defines who is the agent, what is the scene, how an agency is used to achieve a purpose, and the key act taken by the agent. The reason for using such an approach is to adduce the motive of the rhetors, what worldview motivates them. The pentad allows one to identify motives because it provides a way to track how different rhetors might name the various elements of a drama. As Burke notes in Grammar, "Men[sic] may violently disagree about the purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person who did it, or how he[sic] did it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or they may even insist upon totally different words to name the act itself" (xv). By attending to the various ways dramas may be fleshed out, one can track the differing motives guiding the rhetors' perceptions, and relaying, of the story. One can discern the particular frame induced by the story. Just as one can come to understand the quality of an element of the pentad by examining its relations to the other elements, what Burke terms ratios, one also can come to understand the quality of heroism by examining the ratios between the elements that constitute heroism, particularly the ratios between agent and scene.

When introducing the five key terms of dramatism in Grammar, Burke immediately makes clear that these elements are present not just in traditional literary works, but also may be found in "systematically elaborated metaphysical structures, in legal judgments, in poetry and fiction, in political and scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered at random" (xv). As such, great works of art, as well as the shortest of news stories, can be "strategies for selecting enemies and allies, for socializing losses, for warding off evil eye, for purification, propitiation, and desanctification, consolation and vengeance, admonition and exhortation, implicit commands or instructions of one sort or another" (Philosophy 304).

Just as the elements of dramatism may be found in the greatest of art and the shortest of news clips, so too may the genres that make up literature. Of the various forms Burke discussed (which also include epic, elegy, satire, burlesque and grotesque [34-69]), the tragic and the comic have received the most attention (e.g. Brummett; Carlson "Gandhi" and "Limitations"; Condit; Madsen; Powell; Rueckert; Rybacki and Rybacki). Burke outlines the differences between tragic and comic frames of acceptance, comparing how each "stresses its own peculiar way of building the mental equipment (meanings attitudes, character) by which one handles the significant factors of his[sic] time" (Burke, Attitudes 34). Accordingly, he argues, "Art forms like 'tragedy' or 'comedy' or 'satire' would be treated as equipments for living, that size up situations in various ways and in keeping with correspondingly various attitudes" (Burke, Philosophy 304). Tragic and comic frames infuse symbolic action.

Given that sizing up a situation becomes a central part of understanding the way in which various art forms are distinguished, attention to the process of sizing, of magnification and reduction, becomes essential. The comic and tragic frames present the clearest contrast in how a situation is sized.

Burke argues that "great tragic playwrights were pious, orthodox, conservative, 'reactionary' in their attitude towards [personal ambition]; hence they made pride, hubris, the basic sin, and 'welcomed' it by tragic ambiguity" (Attitudes 39). As a result, Burke believes that the tragic "frame of acceptance admonished one to 'resign' himself[sic] to a sense of his limitations" (39). As Burke notes in Attitudes, the concept of heroism fits most neatly into tragedy, where hubris is the greatest sin, gods control destinies, and opponents are seen as evil rather than mistaken.

As an alternative, Burke argues that a comic perspective in which others are seen not as evil, but as mistaken, is the best "equipment for living." Burke's description of the comic frame makes clear its utility: "Like tragedy, comedy warns against the dangers of pride, but its emphasis shifts from crime to stupidity" (41). Such an approach is essential for "humane enlightenment" since it can go no further without "picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken" (41). However, in the example analyzed in this essay, the cause of conflict is only indirectly people (those who built in the wrong areas and who mismanaged fire policy) and, as is typical of tragedy, nature is anthropomorphized (42). Humans are pitted against Mother Nature. Further compounding the complexity of heroism presented in this story is that, generally, stories of the fires were described as having, as noted earlier, "all the makings of a tragedy." However, despite the anthropomorphizing of nature in media coverage, there also was a constant reminder of the role of "man in society" (42). The causes of the fires were not some "deus ex machina" (42) (although a lightening strike did initiate this particular fire). Instead, years of mismanagement, under-funding, and fire suppression created the conditions in which fires could rage. Despite the act of nature and the casting of the summer's events as the making of a tragedy, this story was not a tragic one.

Given the tensions of reduction and magnification throughout the presentation of scene, act and agent, "A Tale of Heroism" presents an alternative way to understand heroism. In fact, it may offer a way to de-link heroism from the tragic frame as it reformulates resignation.

"A Tale of Heroism" represents an interesting twist on resignation. Long did, indeed, resign himself to the limits of what he was able to do &endash; he could not stop the fire &endash; yet he was not willing to resign himself completely. He may not have fought the entire fire, but he did fight to save the homes and the school. The story presented is not a tragedy, even though a hero plays a central role in it. In order to understand how this is symbolically effected, the relationship between scene and agent in the symbolic construction of heroism needs to be explored.

Burke notes that the "concept of scene can be widened or narrowed (conceived of in terms of varying 'scope' or circumference)" ("Dramatism" 446). Burke expands on the concept of scope in relation to scene in Grammar. Attention to scope is important, because the scope of the scene influences the way in which one interprets an agent's act contained within it. As Burke explains, "the choice of circumference for the scene in terms of which a given act is to be located will have a corresponding effect upon the interpretation of the act itself" (77). Although many have noted the power of the scene:act ratio, in terms of the container and the thing contained (e.g. Condit 412), few have examined, in detail, the scene:agent ratio in terms of its relation to heroism.

When examining the presentation of an agent as a hero, critics need to attend not just to the way in which the scene influences the act (a grander scene magnifying the grandness of an act), but also the way in which it influences the agent (a grander scene demanding greatness of the agents contained within it). Just as scene influences the interpretation of an act so, too, does it influence the interpretation of the agent. As Burke notes in Grammar, "the quality of the context in which a subject is placed will affect the quality of the subject placed in that context" (77-78). Accordingly, we are "properly admonished to be on the look-out for these terministic relationships between the circumference and the 'circumfered'" (Grammar 78). Attention to scene, and the magnification and reduction of it, is central to the understanding of heroes and their acts.

In Attitudes, Burke describes the relationship between heroism and magnification of scene: "The heroic promotes acceptance by magnification, making the hero's character as great as the situation he[sic] confronts, and fortifying the non-heroic individual vicariously, by identification with the hero" (43). He contrasts the heroic move to the comic, which dwarfs the situation, arguing that the "heroic converts upwards" (43).

However, the identification between the hero and the audience is not a consubstantial one. In tragic tales, even as the audience identifies with greatness, they are reminded of the need for humility for, ultimately, they are not the hero (36). Additionally, even with the greatest of heroes, some flaw is retained (as in the archetypal Achilles' heel) so that the hero is humanized (36). The comic, in contrast, has no need to retain a small flaw or to remind the audience they are not the hero. In the comic, we are all flawed, are "necessarily mistaken," and heroes are always already human for wisdom "requires fear, resignation, the sense of limits" (42).

As Burke explains in Grammar, act also influences heroism: "A hero is first of all a man[sic] who does heroic things; and his 'heroism' resides in his acts" (42). Thus, in his discussion of the "actus-status" alignment, Burke notes that a person's status (such as firefighter) can impart heroism even though heroic acts have not yet been completed (43). Of course, because the interpretation of an act can be influenced by the circumference of the scene (as noted earlier), even if heroism is influenced by act, scene may still play a controlling role insofar as it influences the interpretation of the act.

Scene in "A Tale of Heroism"

Given the way in which magnification of the scene and magnification of the act (even if only through the scene) contribute to the perceived heroism of the agent, "A Tale of Heroism" presents an apparent contradiction. The scene and the act both are reduced in the telling of the story, yet Long's heroism seems to magnify in proportion to those reductions. The question is: how does the story create such an effect? My argument is that "A Tale of Heroism" presents an instance of comic heroism, where even in the midst of a reduced scene where evil is unclear and the enemy engages in motion, not action, heroism can emerge.

Instead of the scene being magnified, the story reduces it. The scene is reduced from 60 to 70 major wildfires scorching nearly 750,000 acres in 11 western states to one fire scorching 77,000 acres in one corner of one state. In a strict mathematical sense, the story is reduced to one-tenth of its size. In fact, the introduction to the story limits the scene even further, to "a narrow country road near the Yakima Nation Indian reservation in south central Washington." Despite this, the story still presents Long's acts as heroic, as the title makes explicit. How can this converse relationship between scene and agent/act occur?

One explanation that presents itself is that fire, even if only a small one, magnifies scene. Given human beings' relationship with fire, and the ongoing struggle to control it, any fire consumes the scene, and makes the scene ever expanding given that fire expands unless stopped. In his analysis, World Fire, historian Stephen J. Pyne argues that much of the recent history of human relationships with fire is one of failed attempts at control. This overpowering component of fire is made clear in Price's description of the scene as she leave with her animals: "just a huge wall, a solid wall of fire." The scene is no longer a homestead or rural Washington; it is fire, a "wall of fire." Thus, even though the physical scope of the scene may be limited, the mobile and out-of-control nature of fire makes the scene boundless; the fire could have traveled anywhere, and under the correct conditions, grown to an immense size.

Another twist concerning scene presents itself at the end of the story, when Pailthorpe describes what is left after the fire: "an eerie untouched island in a sea of black ruin." Given this is the concluding scene, one might think of the hero as one who failed. However, the fact that Long saved the "Wattenbarger house, an adjacent school building and Susan Price's cottage" re-magnifies the scene. Throughout the story, we had only heard of the house and cottage. All of a sudden, at the very end of the story, a new element of the scene is introduced. We are told that Long not only saved the Price and Wattenbarger buildings, but in his (apparent) spare time, also saved a school.

This move to expand Long's act, even as the scene is reduced, calls for a separate consideration of the relation between act and scene. However, like scene, the act is reduced in the story. Remember, at the end of the story, when Price tries to thank Long, his response is "But, Susan, it's what I do." Instead of Long presenting himself as "great as the situation he confronts," he presents his acts as simply part of who he is. And, this is where the re-magnification occurs. Returning to Burke's discussion of how status (as in firefighter) can impart heroism to an agent, we begin to understand that simply by doing what he does, Long is a hero. The move to heroism is not located simply within the act or the agent, but in the connection between the acts done by an agent as part of his very being. Of course, this then requires an analysis of how fire and firefighters interact.

Beyond the Scene: Comic Heroism and Masculinity

In many ways, "A Tale of Heroism" replicates the structure of fairy tales. A monster (fire) is attacking defenseless people (women and the old). A lone, brave soul with a pure heart enters into the picture to save the day. The story ends with all living happily ever after, (although in this case the lead male and female characters do not marry).

David Long, like the heroes in fairy tales, happens upon the damsel in distress (Susan Price), as though brought to her doorstep by an act of providence. He was on vacation, traveling along a "narrow country road" instead of the more traveled interstate. In fact, the introduction to the story explains that he "chanced upon an emerging burn . . . in an isolated community in rural Washington" (emphasis added) much as the hunter happens upon Little Red Riding Hood and the Beast happens upon the Beauty.

Those saved by Long include Susan Price, who is portrayed in some ways as a stereotypical Earth Mother with her "two cats, eight dogs, and two horses," and Francis Wattenbarger, a 77-year-old rancher. Price's lack of agency is made most evident when Long asks her "Who is fighting this fire?" and her reply is "Well, I don't think anybody is." Of course, the building of firebreaks was happening, as is indicated when the story turns to Wattenbarger. Given that all Long did was build firebreaks, it seems interesting that Long is praised for digging them while Wattenbarger's attempts are dismissed by Price as nothing. Long is the only one allowed agency.

Additionally, the way in which the monster is portrayed raises some interesting questions about whether or not fire is sexed and how it is given agency and not merely portrayed as motion. Women and nature have long been linked (Griffin). As part of this association, two forms of sexed nature appear: Mother Earth and Mother Nature. Mother Earth often appears as a life giving force, a gentle being who nurtures life. Mother Earth is the soft ground, the cool breeze, and the gentle waters. In contrast, one most often hears Mother Nature used to refer to violent natural phenomenon such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Mother Nature is the frozen or scorched earth, the raging gale, and the tumultuous sea. Mother Nature is the wild, uncontrolled and unpredictable elements. Just as dominant ideology often holds two contradictory conceptions of womanhood, women as gentle nurturers and women as unpredictably vicious, so, too, do we seem to operate with two visions of nature.

In the case of fire, one sees Mother Nature at work. However, even as we anthropomorphize nature as fire, so, too, were we constantly reminded by the summer's news coverage of the role of human beings in the making of fire. (More recently, we are presented with another example of human beings as the cause of fire with the story of Terry Lynn Barton, the U.S. Forest Service worker who began the Hayman fire in Colorado, which to date has charred 130,000 acres, burned at least two dozen homes, and cost $ 52 million to put out [Vanden Brook and Kenworthy 1A].)

Fire and women have long been associated. Within Hawai'ian mythology, one finds Pele, described as "'She-Who-Shapes-The-Sacred-Land' in ancient Hawaiian chants, the volcano goddess, Pele, was passionate, volatile, and capricious" (Fullard-Leo). In India "[t]he worship of, and reverence for KaliMa is widespread" and "[m]any contemporary Pagans are also reclaiming a connection with these fierce Goddesses" (Willowroot). In fact, although Kali is a goddess of many faces, one of the most common is "Kali as dark night, mother and destructress of time, as the fire of the worlds dissolution" ("Kali"). Even more interesting is the relationship between masculinity and fire; Kali was created by three male gods (Shiva, Vishnu, and Bramha) to kill a demon whom the male gods had made invincible against all living beings like man, god, and animals. Having forgotten to mention women, the demon was vulnerable to Kali, an agency of the male gods. Even when women and fire are equated, it may still be constrained by the agency of male gods. Accordingly, one could read this story not only as Long-the-man saving Price-as-mother-earth, but also as Long-the-man slaying Mother-Nature-as-fire.

Although the above analysis argues that fire is natural, the story could also be read in such a way that fire is denaturalized. In World Fire, Pyne argues that much of the recent history of human relationships with fire is one of failed attempts at control. In fact, he argues that attempts to control fire, from Yellowstone in 1988 to the Svedjebruk fires in Sweden, are examples of both the futility of control and the unnecessary costs associated with it.

Although he argues that attempts at control are futile at best, and counterproductive at worst, Pyne organizes his book around the methodology of fire control: smoke report, size-up, hot-spotting, control, mop-up, and after the last smoke (6-7). Interestingly enough, Pailthorpe's story follows a similar pattern. The story opens with Long spotting smoke and watching it for "about an hour." He then stops, meets Price, and with binoculars "studied the smoke." After the size-up, he is then portrayed as seeing a hotspot in which Wattenbarger was operating, as "the fire was getting dangerously close to the old man." After making sure that Price and Wattenbarger were safely away, Long fights for limited control of the fire. The story then ends with the mop up and the last smoke. The homes are saved, and Long is described as resting in his sister's house in Seattle.

The form of the story mimics the form of firefighting. In so doing, it creates the impression that just as the facts can be controlled in the confines of a news story, a fire can be controlled by the actions of firefighters. No question exists that the fire should be fought. No question is raised about whether Price and Wattenbarger have built in a place in which the environment cannot sustain human habitation immune from natural processes, such as fire. The story presents the idea that the fire should be fought as a fact.

Treating fire as the archetypal enemy creates a bridge between our tragic and comic understandings of heroism. Presenting this story as yet another instance of urban encroachment in wild areas, or of the defensive actions of one firefighter, would not have generated the dramatic power the story did. Instead, the story weaves together the traditional (tragic) in the form of the fairy tale with appropriately aged and sexed victims and saviors, and the untraditional (comic).

Conclusion: Letting the Story Burn Itself Out

As spring of 2001 bloomed in resplendent shades of green, news stories already began exploring the possibilities of another flammable summer. Even as winter snowmelt flowing into the Mississippi flooded the Midwest towns along its banks, the Southeast, the West and Northwest considered what to do given the lack of rain over the winter season. The spring of 2002 appears no different, with drought reports in the East and fires breaking out across the West. Fires are a certainty, and many areas considered the use of, and have been using, preventative burns. The effects of 100 years of misguided forest policy were not burned away in a single summer. As the US readies itself to approach yet another burning season, and as we struggle with the "tragedy of September 11" and its heroes, a reflection on the appropriate "equipment for living" through such a time seems appropriate (Burke, Philosophy 293).

"A Tale of Heroism" might provide that equipment, but not without its own drawbacks. It is more than a story of one firefighter combating one corner of an out-of-control wildfire. In many ways, the story is an archetype of North American hero tales, complete with battles against nature, women in need of protection, and elderly men in need of saving. As such, the story reinforces cultural ideologies that gender both heroes and nature. The story of Long reinforces the association of heroism with masculinity, and femininity with the need to be saved by a hero. Additionally, the story reinforces a gendered vision of nature as something to be controlled by men. Fire is Mother Nature at work, and such work must be interrupted.

However, such an analysis may oversimplify the rhetorical forces at work in the story. In the same way that the story ideologically constrains, it also holds the potential to model new forms of heroism &endash; a comic form that rests not in the magnification of the agent, but in the recognition of deeds done well.

"A Tale of Heroism" is a unique tale of heroism insofar as it seems to combine the magnification upward attendant to heroism, and "fortif[ies] the non-heroic individual vicariously, by identification with the hero," while it avoids the hubris that is likely to call down the wrath of the gods . . . and goddesses. Instead of magnifying both the act and scene upward, the story (and Long, its lead character) make it seem as though anyone could achieve what Long had. In some ways, the heroism becomes more intense because it is not presented, either by the story or by Long, as an act of heroism. Thus, one can read this story as an example of comic heroism, in which a series of human mistakes combined with natural conditions to create a scene in which an individual simply does what he is trained to do and, in the process, saves (not the world) but two homes and a school. Of course, even that victory is provisional, since fires will always begin anew, as noted in the story's conclusion that references Long's leaving to fight fires in Montana. In a comic frame, heroism resides in the daily surviving of others' mistakes and in the daily doing of what one does.

Thus, perhaps it is not masculinity that enables heroism, but the simple doing of what needs to be done. Fire becomes not the evil to be vanquished, but a mistake that needs correcting. In this world, we are all capable of heroism as we do well what we should do. In such a world, let the fire of that type of heroism burn within us all.

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