Quel rêve Américain

I am going to talk about the notion " Myths and heroes" studied in a unit entitled "What's the American dream?"

First of all, I would like to give a definition of the word "myth" : myth may mean "an ancient story about gods, heroes and magic" ; it often means " a popular belief or tradition embodying the ideals and institutions of a society " . It can also refer to " a theme or character type embodying an idea ".

In the unit, we focused on the myth of the American Dream.

In order to illustrate the notion, I have chosen 3 documents : a drawing, a text and a cartoon.

The first document which is a black and white drawing depicts a ship entering the port of New-York, probably in at the beginning of the 20th century. In the foreground, We can see a crowd of people looking eagerly at the impressive statue of Liberty. They are obviously of poor conditions. Among themn there are old men, young couples and some women with young children. It's indeed the start of a brand new life for them. They have left everything to make a fortune and to live a better life in the USA. We can say that these people believe in the American dream. They probably think that it's a land of opportunities -

As in the second document, which is an extract from the novel "A boy's journey" by Seymour Rechtzeit. As a matter of fact, the text deals with Seymour's story : Indeed, when he was 8, Seymour left his homeland Poland to emigrate to the USA beacause his family thought that there are were more opportunities form him there. Moreover, times were hard in Europe. So, he travelled with his father by ship. The conditions were dreadful. They were in steerage during two weeks. Nonetheless, he was right to leave to the USA and we can imagine that America is the place where dreams could come true because today, Seymour Rechtzeit is a singer and a theater actor who has become a well-known figure in the Yiddish theatre in the USA.

However, in the last document which is a cartoon, we have to deal with another point of view about the American Dream. Indeed, this cartoon shows the Statue of Liberty that is personified as a homeless person. She is seating against a whole,<??? she looks miserable and destitute. She is still wearing her crown and holding the book of indepedence in her left arm but her torch has no flame and is used as a begging bowl. We can say that this picture debunks the myth of the Statue enlightening the World. Here, this statue relies on people's compassion and she is doomed to a grim future. In fact, the cartoon stresses the difficulties America has to go through. In a nutshell, Pete shows us a country which is no longer a land of opportunities and which does not make people dream anymore.

To sum up and to conclude, I would say that in the first two documents, the idea put forward is that the prospect of prosperity by the personal enrichment is an integral part of the American dream. But, in the last document, we find out that the American

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