PPC ANGLAIS

The notion I’m going to deal is Myths and heroes. A myth is a popular story or belief that evolves over time and that conveys the ideals of a given society. Heroes are often the characters of myths. A heroe is seen as someone special, who does things that other people can't. I will ask the following question : How does myths and heroes influence the american society? I feel this notion is best illustrated by the myth of witches in America.

First of all I will talk about witches and witch hunting in America during the 17th century. During this period witches are seen like people who are under the devil possession. In a text in my book I studied about Puritanism. Puritanism in New England was based on a very strict moral code and a denial of physical and social pleasure. Beyond all these rules in Puritain society we thought that the forest was the home of the devil and the place where witches met at night. Puritans found spiritual meaning in everything. Any suspicious person had to prove his guilt of practicing witchcraft. It’s easy to think that there was paranoia in New England during the 17th century

An another good example of witch hunting in the 17th century is the famous story of the witches of Salem. The witches of Salem were a group of girls from Salem in Massachusetts who suffered of physical convulsion, fever, hallucination and many strange symptoms. No one could explain these symptoms so they were believed to be under the influence of the devil. Because of that many people have been accused of witchcraft and 20 peoples have been hanged. We can still say that paranoia has driven them to commit such acts.

Secondly I want to talk about witch hunting in America during the 20th century. We call here witches peoples who were suspected to be communist. In the 1950’s USA feared a possible communist conspiracy. The US senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists. It was the beginning of the McCarthyism, it was like a witches hunting. The most famous event to explain the McCarthyism is the Hollywood blacklist. A lot of people who works in the movie industry have been blacklisted. These people were suspected to be in the communist party or suspected of subversive activities. These peoples who had been paid extremely high salaries in the entertainment industry found themselves forced to find a poorly paid job.

We can take the example of Sacco and Vanzetti to show another hunting of an unknown population. Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italians anarchists who were found guilty of robbery and murders.

Their trial was corrupt, they were found guilty because of their Italian origins, in fact they were innocents. Italians were badly considered at this time so they were the perfect scapegoat.

Arthur Miller with The Crucible wanted to show the fact that how beliefs pushed to the extreme can lead to abominable collective behavior and he mades the connection in his play between the witch hunting during the 17th et the hunt of communist during the 20th century.

To conclude, we can say that the myths scared the American society. Witches are burnt and even three centuries later, people are frigthened by myths so they were paranoid. So, because they are afraid, they rejected people they think possessed, witched, by killing them or condamning them to jail.

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