Myths and heroes: are the europenans actually heroes at this date?

David                                Synthèse Anglais[pic 1]

Cédric                                Myths and heroes

A myth can be defined as a story about gods or heroes, it can be a popular belief or a tradition or a false notion. A hero can be a mythological figure, a person who is admired for his achievements, a superhero or maybe a role model or an icone. I’m going to present you the notion «Myths and heroes» within the western conquest context. Throught the question: Are the europeans actually heroes at this date ? To answer i gonna study first the point of view of the europeands and after i would explain the wester context lived by the natives. For this i gonna use four document: «The New World» a film by Terence Malik, «Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee» a film by Yves Simoneau, The painting «Spirit of the Frontier» by John Gast, and the extract «How many more ?» from «Dance with Wolves» by Michael Blake.

So first i would study the story throught europeans’s eyes, they think that they have a manifest destiny and sot hey think that the new world is theirs. Indeed since the arrival of the early settlers the europeans are pushing the Frontier more and more far from the East Coast as we can see in «The spirit of the frontier» the europeans are chassing the natives who are frunning away. The whites settled more and more at West, installing the telegram, cultivating the land. The manifest destiny is represented on the painting trought an alegory, the angel flying above the plain. Therefore the whites think do what’s right, they think be heroes and they consider the indians like savages as says the General Shereman in «Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee». Throught this character we can clearly see the vision of the white superiority, for him the indian should be killed to gain the land.

        Then we can see a second vison of the conquest in which the white isn’t a hero but an brutal conqueror like in the film «The new world », the indians are helping the europeans with giving them food because they were starving. But the white think that the land should belong at those whitch cultivate it and not at savages, and the settlers burn the natives’s village at the end of the film. The indians only wan’t to be let in peace like in the extract of «Dance with Wolves» in witch the indian Kicking Bird is asking to the white lieutenant Dumbar how many more whites would come. He don’t understant why the whites don let the indians live alone. Dumbar don’t explain him that the aim of the Americans is the colonisation.

        To conclude we have seen that this documents which are illustring the notion myths and heroes, are showing us two differents vision of the europeans. The whites consider themselves as heroes guided by a manifest destiny to conquier the land. But on an other side we have the western conquier lived by the natives. They are killed by the europeans for the land conquier, theirs village burned and theirs lands invaded by settlers

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