Expression orale type BAC, mythes et héros

I’m going to talk about the notion of Myths and heroes. First of all, I would like to give some definitions : Heroes are courageus, have confidence in themselves, are beautiful and intelligent. They always save the world and are considered as perfect. When you hear the word 'hero' certain you might think about Superman saving Lois Lane or picture James Bond sacrificing himself to save the world. Conversely, antiheroes are fascinating characters who have appeared in literature, in film, and on stage for centuries. An antihero is a protagonist who is sometimes against the heroe of a story. Unlike heroes, antiheroes are ugly, fearful, rebellious or selfish.  Antiheros believe in society but can’t do anything to help it because they cause harm. For example, Gru from despicable me is a tipical antihero. He is ugly and a good vilain but in fact he is gentle and he won’t cause harm to his family. Do not confuse antiheroes and villains who are evil traitors like The Joker, Batman's enemy. And finally, a myth is a story featuring supernatural beings, imaginary actions, collective fantasies, and so on. The myth can also be an imaginary character whose several traits correspond to a human ideal, an exemplary model such as Don Juan.

There’s a lot of characters from litterature and stories that have become mythics and a big part of our collective culture. Almost all of these myths have traveled in time and space. To illustrate this notion, I intend to speak about some documents we studied in class about Gothic fictions. Gothic Fictions were born in England and developed worldwide.

First, I’m gonna present the ingredients of a Gothic Story. It praises what is irrational. These stories are creepy and scary. In these stories, there are monsters or warewolves like in the trailer of the movie RED RIDING HOOD that we studied in class. This film gives chills thanks to suspense. However, This film is inspired by the fairy tale of the same name by Charles Perrault. Both of these stories show the same characters: the little red riding hood, the wolf (a werewolf in the movie) and the hunter. In both, the setting is the same : the wood. But in fact, this movie is much more threatening and fearful than the fairy tail. The plot of the fairy tail is less complicated and less frightening than the movie’s version. Our generation went to an old fairy tale to bring it back up to date.

Then, we can give the example of Dracula, a gothic story about a visitor who came in the castle of the count dracula and who describes what’s happening. This story is typical of gothic litterature because we have the helpless victim Jonathan Harper, the victimizer Dracula and a scary castle with an atmosphere quite oppressive and supernatural events. We can say that Jonathan Harper is a heroe because he is brave when he goes to visit the rooms of the castle to discover the true nature of the count. This is probably because he is a curious writer. He describes what he sees without panic even if he is terrified. He know that he can’t run out so he tries to analyze the situation. In contrast, Dracula is a sadist who kidnaps his victims and holds them captive in his castle. He plays with them and he keeps his cool. He is typically a naughty. A real life heroe like Jonathan is eable to escape every situation even if he is scared while a villain is just trying to kill or to cause harm to people just like Dracula does. Dracula is probably the best-known vampire tale in the world and his story, inspired by the count Vlad Tepes, went throught time and inspires movies of out time like Twilight. The main protagonist, Bella, is as facinated by the power of the vampire Edward as Jonathan is with the count and both of these stories takes place in landscapes with mountains and forests. Both have an oppressive and terrific atmosphere. We can say that the story of Dracula telled by Jonathan became mythic. Dracula is even more a myth that Jonathan. In effect, he is more fascinating than a normal person like us because he is cruel and demoniac and people like that. I that’s why we know his legendary name.

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