Oral anglais the great gastby

ORAL FORMS AND PLACES OF POWER

I would like to talk about the notion forms of power.

To begin, power is the authority exercised by a person or institution over a person or community of individuals. Power is expressed at the political, social and personal levels, which is why it can also cause conflicts within a community. It can thus lead to resistance and struggles on the part of groups who are excluded. There are multiple forms and places of power : Institutions (Parliament, Monarchy, Court of Justice), The press (The "fourth power"), and Culture (language, knowledge). As a result of all these forms of power, many forms of struggle against power have been put in place, such as : Political struggle (peaceful or not), Social struggle (strikes, demonstrations), or Art (painting, cinema, music, literature).

To introduce this notion, I will rely on the American Dream. We can also ask ourselves why and how is the American Dream a form of power ?

To answer the question, I will already define what the American dream is and I will mainly rely on a book that we studied in class and that illustrates well this American dream : The Great Gatsby with the character of Jay Gatsby.

First, the American dream is an expression which means a happy way of living that is believed of by many Americans to be something that can be achieved by anyone (in the U.S.), especially by working hard and becoming successful.

It first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century with The Gold Rush to the West.

The American dream is the myth of the self-made man, that is to say an individual, starting from nothing and often poor who goes through his hard work, makes a fortune and climbs the social ladder. Many men realized this American dream and became millionaires with success stories. That's why the American dream is still attracting more generations today. I find the American dream very interesting because I get the impression that it gives hope to people who do not have any anymore, like poor people for example. Having seen what the American dream was, let's see now how The Great Gatsby presents it.

Next, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an American writer effectively, represents the American dream in his book, The Great Gatsby that he write in 1925, through the main character of the novel that is Jay Gatsby.

Jay Gatsby, will actually achieve the American dream because he’s a self made-man : he started from nothing, because his parents and his family were poor. A day, he saw a big yacht in a lake and then, he understood that he wanted to become rich and make is own fortune. For five years he accompanied Dan Cody, the owner of the yacht and also an influential billionaire everywhere and served as a handyman. When Cody died, Gatsby took advantage of prohibition to make a fortune through smuggling by partnering with various gangsters (such as Meyer Wolfsheim), by selling alcohol… we can actually say that Gatsby is a self-made man and that he has created his own fortune, although to get there he has not always resorted to very correct methods because he took advantage of the situation.

After seeing what the American dream was and how The Great Gatsby presented it, we can conclude that the American

...