Myths et heroes: Do myths belong rather to fiction or reality?

LVA Myth and heroes

Myths and heroes are two very fascinating things, in our everyday life we ​​have to deal with myths that have lasted for millennia and are still perpetuated today, a myth can be real as fictional, just like the heroes who are for some fictitious and others real. Heroes embody for us the great moral values ​​with which we identify. However do myths belong rather to fiction or reality ?

First we will see myths and heroes in literature with the example of gothic stories and the influence of the myth on a country

First of all, the gothic is an English literary style, it is recognizable thanks to the decor where there are many dark elements scary and terrifying, there are also the characters who are often stereotyped. The Gothic's desire is to scare and remain in terror, as in the text "At Count Dracula's", which is a text extracted from Bram Storek, Dracula, 1897, this is an excerpt from the diary of a young solicitor named Jonathan Harker, tracing his day, is the day of May 8th that is told, while he is in the castle of Dracula to negotiate the sale of the castle; At the beginning everything went smoothly , Jonathan will shave as we see in line 5 "I felt a hand on my shoulder", except that it cuts, he hears voices it was of Dracula, he could see it in real life, but he didn't see his reflection in the mirror, the situation became more stressful, afterwards while he was shaving, he cut himself. Suddenly Dracula jumped on him except that at the same moment he touched a crucifix which made him lucid again and warned to prevent jonathan that he must pay attention to him as we can see line 18: "Take care" Jonathan starts panicking and realizes that Dracula is a vampire and that he is a prisoner as can be seen in line 26 "The castle is a prison, and I am a prisoner!" This text is a gothic story because it has all the features, however this myth about vampires remain in the minds of everyone even if it seems wrong, this myth belongs more to fiction than reality, because it includes supernatural facts , unlike that of the salem witches who are still troubled today and who are reporting real facts.

The myth of the witches of salem, which is a real myth, was accompanied by that of maccartism, which is also a real myth, which took enormous proportions in the 50s in the United States, during the beginning of the cold war, as witness the cartoon "you read books, eh" which was published in the washington post.It is a criticism of McCarthyism, McCarthyism is a phenomenon that was created by a deputy named John Maccarthy who wants hunt all the witches, all the communists and all that have knowledge (Professors, intellectuals ...) because they represent a danger for the society according to this deputy. On the cartoon, in the middle, we can see a mistress school that is interrogated by 8 men who are looking for a clue, an adherence to communism, they think that the woman is a criminal because she can read from where the title of the cartoon "you read books, eh ". They search his class for To verify that she is not a communist and that she doesn't teach the ideas that would go against McCarthyism . The young teacher is very intelligent that men, because she has the power of knowledge. Moreover we can see the irony that is present in the misspelling "USSR" instead of "URSS" as well as in the obecession of men who seem menacing, and especially complemetent narrow and stupid. This myth is real, and this cartoon tells of a scene that was happening regularly during the period of McCarthyism, nowadays people still claim to be witches of salem.The myth has gone through the ages and generations and remained intact according to some people.

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