MTyths and heroes: American witches

The notion I’m going to deal with is myths and heroes. First of all i will define a myth and a heroe. The myth evokes the human condition in general, its history passed on at first orally and often embodied by a hero, a place or a community. The hero can be a fictitious or real character who marked the tradition, the story, the everyday life. The popular culture and the counterculture don’t stop producing their own heroes.

This year in class we studied several documents to illustrate the myths and heroes and in particular we have seen three documents :

• « Puritanism in 17th century New england »

•  « witch-hunter in the 20th century »

• « Sacco and Vanzetti »

I choose to talk about « the myth of witches in America ». This myth is a part of american culture for centuries. How this myth evolved over centuries ?

1_First we will see Witches and witch hunting in 17th century America

2_After that we will see Witches and witch hunting in 20th century America

1 Witches and witch hunting in 17th century America

- In 17th century, the legion of witches was brought by american colonists from europe, like we saw in the text « witches of salem ». Indeed, no one could determine that happening in the city and they suspected the evil.

- As we can see in « puritism in 17th century » the witch hunting began. Indeed, Witches were hunted down by Puritans in the 17th century. In more, we see that people who were suspected to be a witch were arrested, tortured and killed.

- We can explain this hunting because the people in America believed in witches and evil that scared them

2 Witches and witch hunting in 20th century America

- In the 20th century, the witch hunting in America is completly deferent than the 17th century. Indeed, in the 20th century, « a witch » is someone who is suspected to be against the governement or who criticize it. We can see that in « The Red scare » or in the « Mc Cartyism ». It is true that during the cold war, Americans were scared about comunism. Comunism is compare to witches.

- We have the perfect exemple of the witch hunting in « Not You ». They had to denouce other persons to keep their normal life

Conclusion :

To conclude, the myth of witches has completely changed because in american they went from a definition of witches totally paranormal to a remake deffinition associate with politics mouvement.

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