Oral anglais myths and heroes

I’m going to deal with the notion of myths and heroes. I’d like to begin by giving a definition: 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 or her achievements, a superhero or maybe a role model or an icon.

In order to illustrate this notion I will try to answer some questions: First, I would like to concentrate on how can myths and heroes influence people’s careers? And then I will move on to what’s the impact of some heroes’ action on society? And finally I will take a look at how unexplained phenomena can lead to the creation of myths and how progress in science has created new heroes?

Let’s begin by talking about the influence of heroes in people’s career. A hero is a person who is admired because he has done something outstanding, he has noble qualities like bravery or strength. For example, in an article untitled “A successful woman” the author underlines the fact that she became one of a most popular person in the world whereas she was poor when she was young. She influenced the course of life of people worldwide. Moreover a hero can also be a source of inspiration for others, but I’m convinced that he is not necessarily someone famous, he can be a member of our family or a friend. Someone we just admire. Indeed, we read a text written by Robin Olds, a famous fighter pilot during the WWII. He highlights the fact that he admires his father a famous pilot too but during WWI. In his text, the author explains that his father was a model and he was the person who shepherd him to make important choices, in particular career choice. I really feel that we all need to be influenced by a person or something like that. In my opinion myths are stories that are based on tradition. They may have factual origins or just be completely fictional. I think that they can help to answer questions, they can reassure and sometimes that can give people hope.

The second part is about the impact of some heroes on our society. For me, there are two types of heroes, the first one is the fictional who can be mythological heroes like Hercules. The second one is the real hero who can be historical, modern heroes, like the firefighters who were honored because of their actions on the 11th of September 2011 during the Twins Towers attacks in New York City. They put their lives in danger to save people themselves in danger. There is also a lot of people who save lives during this attacks risking their lives. Both, firefighters and first responders are heroes because they have done something really special and have risked their own lives for another. But there are also heroes who have impacted the foundations of the society. We saw that Rosa Parks was an fervent activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She provoked the authorities by sitting on a seat in a bus reserved for white passengers only, risking her life to denounce the segregation. By doing that, she became a hero. Heroes inspire younger generations to do great things. 

Eventually, let's take a look at the third part which is about the creation of new myths and heroes.  Heroes can take part in a myth which is a collective belief at the origin of the creation of a nation, it can be a false or a legendary story. For most persons, a myth is a story about heroes who are sons of gods with either incredible strength or bravery to help them in amazing adventures against the evils of the world We listened a conversation between three friends. One of them, John said that scientists as heroes because they can bring answers to our questions. But when they can't, most people put this down to unexplained phenomena. Because we used to have explanations for whatever questions we do have. So when it is not the case, we made our own explanation. But his friend Helen didn't agree, for her, no fantastic explanation is required. In my opinion, unexplained phenomena are mysterious exactly like myth so we link them together by creating new explanations sometimes fantastic ones.

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