Myths and heroes : is the American dream a dream or a nightmare ?

Notion 1 :

Myths and Heroes

The notion we studied in class is : myths and heroes. But we’ve only worked on the part of the myths. A myth can be a popular belief or tradition embodying the ideals and institutions of the society, like the American dream.

The issue raised here is, is this American dream a dream or a nightmare ?

To answer this question we studied 3 documents in class .

The 1st one is a cartoon drawn by Jeff Parker in 2006. The main theme seems to be the native/settlers relationship. It present us a scene where settlers are trying to land on Plymouth rock but the natives are building a wood fence to stop them. Here the role are reverse : the settlers are the migrants of today and the natives play the Americans. It can make us wonder: what would’ve happened if the natives had rejected the first settlers, would the USA exist today?

The 2nd doc is about the border wall or border fence as it is called in the USA, which separates the USA of the Mexico. It is a fence which covers 1/3 of the US’s entire southern frontier with Mexico. It is a physical barrier which divides the desert and cut through towns. Its role is to prevent migrants from entering the country.

The final document is a song wrote by Springsteen in 2012, which is called “American land”. This song is about a young man who with his girlfriend wants to emigrate to America to start a better new life. The lyrics makes us understand that he believes in the American dream. According to him America is the land of opportunities, as long as he will be there he will have this luck.

Those 3 documents show us that the American dream seems to be a huge lie invented and told to attract people to the United States. The first 2 docs illustrate this state of mind, in the 1st one migrants are prohibited so they do not have any luck, and the 2nd one is about border wall built to stop them. Here it’s obvious that not everyone is authorized to enter. This time the 3d document could make us think differently ‘cause this young man is describing us the USA in a dreamy way but I’m not so sure that he really knows what he’s talking about. Let me explain: he have never been to America so he’s just trying to to picture it but he might disappointed of what he’s gonna discover there.

I can conclude by saying that the American dream is just an illusion create for those who aren’t in the USA .

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