Myths and heroes : San Francisco

Anglais

I’m going to talk about the notion of myths and heroes. First of all, I’d like to give a definition of this notion. A myth represents somebody or something surrounded by an amazing esteem because people award qualities and values to it and respect them. Secondly, a hero is somebody famous thanks to feats or virtues                                                                        In order to illustrate this notion, I have chosen to talk about San Francisco, we can wonder what makes san francisco a city legendary, I will use 3 doc to explain it: The gold rush, the invention of jean and the beat generation.

* The Gold Rush was a migration of people from all around the world to a place where gold was discovered. During the 1840's a major discovery was made in California. That event triggered a huge wore of migration of gold seekers from all over the world in fact then prime goal was to become successful in other words to go from rags to riches. Let's take for example my first document, this is an audio document talking about the arrival of a man named John Satter in america, he took for teammate an other man named James Marshall, the two men have keep the secret and thanks to this, Sam Brannan became the richest man in California selling tools to the gold-miners. James Marshall was the one who gave impetus to the Gold Rush in California since he was at the origin of the discovery. Both men are definitely associated with the Californian Gold Rush.

* The second document seems to be a promotional video. Levi's is presented as a Symbol of America. In 1853, Levi Strauss took advantage of the Gold Rush, he moved to the West to make a fortune. Levis came to san francisco aiming to set up a west coast brench of his family dry goods business and hoping to cash in on the gold rush. Mining is a back breaking work, it wears on clothing. A tailor named jacob davis and he sees the need for industial strenght pants. They benefited from the Gold Rush although they didn’t take an active part in it. Like Sam Brannan, they knew how to use the Gold Rush as a merchandising tool for their jeans. Its also for that, that we can say blue jeans is a metaphor for America itself.

*  The third document is also an audio document. It's a discussion between a journalist and Richard Gonzalez.

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