Notion Myths and Heroes, the American Dream.

Myths and heroes

The american dream is the concept that everybody has the same chances to climb up the social ladder, no matter where he starts from. Indeed, it emplies that everybody, with hard work can go from rags to riches. I have chosen to talk about the american dream through the notion of Myths and Heroes. First of all, let’s define it. A hero is a person admired for his or her achievements, noble qualities and great courage, or an object of extreme admiration and devotion. A myth can be an ancient story about old mystical beliefs or a popular brief or tradition embodying the ideals and institutions of a society. The second definition will definitively be more useful for our subject. The number of movies inspired by the American dream is uncountable, but poverty and immigration seem to set limits to this concept. Consequently, it is legitimate to wonder if today the American dream is still relevant. To do so, we are going to analyse some cultural figures that imbodie the American dream and then analyse what are the limits that stands to it. I am going to use various documents : poster of Rocky, an oral comprehension about immigrants an a song of bruce Springsteen : American Land.

The American dream has been represented several times in the popular culture. Those works show that the concept is alive in many minds, and give to people the courage to realize their dreams, by imitating their heroe. Let’s talk about Rocky. It is a movie realized by John Avildsen in 1976, the main character is played by Sylvester Stallone. It was followed by six movies including the most recent « Creed ». Rocky imbodies the American Dream. Indeed, he is at the beginning a little boxer, careless with his training, implied in illegal businesses. One day, the best boxer in the world chose randomly Rocky to fight and give him the chance to be the new number one. Here we can clearly see that the heroe gets one chance on a million to succeed. The movie shows that with hard work and confident, even the smallest one can work his way up the social ladder.

The other document is American Land. The song places the narrator in the skin of an immigrant who wants to take his chance in America. This is the old vision of the American dream, comparated to Rocky. The music also makes think about that because of the irish and country influences. Irish because a lot of them immigrated to Usa because of famine and country because it is an icône of american culture.

Nevertheless, the American dream is debatable. First, because poverty, inegualities and discrimination are too much present in America. It is false to say that everybody has the same chances to do whatever he wants. For exemple, the audio document shows us that people lost confident is the american dream. It is the interview of two people with different pint of view and experiences. Martin immigrated to usa for studies. He was confident to get a job after his degree. He is disappointed because nobody contacted him for a job. Nick left him country because of political upheavals. He lost three times his job, did not had the success he wanted. However, the american dream is still alive in his heart, he stills believe in it because it gives him courage to go further.

Finally, we can say that the American dream lost a part of his sense. The growth

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