Bonjour à tous,

Voici ma préparation pour mon oral d'anglais sur la notion de myths et héros. Si quelqu'un pouvait prendre le temps de me corriger ça me rendrait un énorme service.

Merci d'avance ! :)

Myths and Heroes

I am going to talk about the idea of progres and first of all, I would like to give a definition of this notion. First of all a hero is a person who is admired because he has done something outstanding and he has nobles qualities like bravery or strength. Furthermore, a hero has done something special and risked his own life to change our world. He can be a source of inspiration for others. Two types of heroes are possible, on one hand, there are the fictional ones who can be mythological heroes like Ulysses, superheroes or heroes of a story and on the other hand, there are the real heroes who can be historical heroes, modern heroes like the firefighters after the World Trade Center tragedy in 2001 or the one day heroes. Heroes can take part in a myth which is a collective belief at the origin of the creation of a nation, it can be a false or a legendary story. Today I have decided to speak about a famous myth which is the American dream.
A unitary definition does not exist–the American dream probably has a different meaning to every US citizen. In general, the American dream can be defined as being the opportunity and freedom for all citizens to achieve their goals and become rich and famous if only they work hard enough.The first settlers hoped for freedom of religion; in their home countries they had been persecuted because of their religious and political views. Bad living conditions in Europe and the hope for better living standards in America attracted more and more settlers to migrate to the new world. Today’s role of the American dream is a matter of discussion. Some think that the American dream is still a viable element today, for others it is only an illusion. Hence, can we question how can the American dream turn into a nightmare ?
As part of the notion, we have studied several documents (2 texts and a video) and I've chosen to focus on the documents entitled « Village of Fear » and « Not you ! ».

The first document I have chosen is an extract from a play entitled « The Crucible » written by Arthur Miller and published in 1963. The scene takes place in Salem, Massachussetts, in the late 18th century. The reverend Parris discovered his niece, Abigail, and his daughter, Betty, dancing naked one night in the forest. The villagers believe that they are witches, and Parris is afraid of his enemies. He thinks that they'll take advantage of the fact that he is in trouble. He is angry, worried because of the two girls. When Abigail says to him that they had just dancing, he doesn' t believe her and thinks they were practising witchcraft. Moreover, this episode is connected with another one. Indeed, when Miller wrote « The Crucible », it was the Cold War, it was in the 1950s. There was a red scare that is to say a fear of the communists, and a seantor of this period, Mc Carthy, launched a hunt against communists, like the witch hunts in Salem before. Everybody was suspected of being a communists (like Charlie Chaplin for example), and there was « The Hollywood blacklist » (with Dalton Trumbo for example).

The second document is an extract from a novel entitled « The Pursuit of Happiness » written by Douglas Kennedy and published in 2002. The scene takes place in the same period, during Mc Carthy's witch hunt and the red scare. The main characters, Sara and her lover Jack have a row. Jack was accused of being a communist but, to show that he is innocent, he gave the name of Eric, Sara's brother. Eric refused to denounce somebody else, he lose his job and committed suicide. According to Sara, things would be different if Jack had been more courageous. She blamed him for being a coward but he said he did that to prove that he was a good American. And if he hadn't denounced Eric, somebody else would have done that. Eric is not really a hero because even if he resisted power, he committed suicide and it's a bit selfish.

To conclude, the two documents illustrate the problem because, in the first document, the descendants of the first settlers are in America because their ancestors were persecuted for their faith in Europe. They wanted to have a better life, a better standard of living but, finally, their dream turn into a nightmare since they were persecuted because they were suspected of being witches. And in the second document, the American dream turn also into a nightmare because of Mc Carthy : they experienced hell with the witch hunt against Communists. People lost their jobs, committed suicide...