Short and Short (1995) claim that the 1988 debate over the handling of the fires in Yellowstone National Park was one of competing archetypal metaphors. The opposition to the government's policy on allowing certain fires to take their course used metaphors of death while those who supported the policy used metaphors of rebirth. The article overtly states that is using a metaphorical analysis of the piece, but there is a distinct feeling of Kenneth Burke's notion of god and demon terms stemming from the dueling metaphors. The article attempts to show how the language of the two groups emphasized their metaphor in the context of the situation.
The article starts with a brief history of the fire and similar fires as well as analysis of other areas of context. Though Yellowstone was burning, the government had a policy of letting forest fires in national parks take their course if ecologists deemed it necessary. This policy had worked in the past, but citizens at a local and national level voiced outcry over the blackened trees and ground they saw on television. What started as a routine maintenance decision soon became a national debate.
Those opposing the fires quickly took to using language that expressed a metaphor of death. According to Short and Short, the metaphor of death linked the Yellowstone fire to ideas of permanence and also emphasized the value of such a fire in economic terms (Visions of death, para. 4). Such archetypal metaphors allowed for a "conceptual vision that provided a coherent and systematic form" (Death and rebirth, para. 7). Groups opposing the fire fell into two groups, those who used the metaphor of death to emphasize destroyed forestry and those who used death to emphasized economic consequences. To draw attention to the forestry, newscasters and onlookers frequently compared the park to hell (Visions of death, para. 3) or a disease (Visions of Death, para.
