Ppc anglais myths and heroes

I am going to talk about the notion “Myths and Heroes”.

A myth is a traditional story concerning the early history of a group of people. It involves supernatural beings and events. A hero is someone who is admired for his qualities, courage and personal achievements. He should be wise, reckless, helpful.

In Greek or Roman mythologies, a hero is someone who is a half-human, half-god person. Nowadays, heroes are not only in legends, but also in real life. Therefore, there are a lot of heroes in our world, including people who deserve to be recognized as such.

This subject leads me to wonder if heroes don't just exist in myths, who are they in real life?

Firstly, we will allude to people who can be considered as heroes because of their hard work to survive : the working class, and then, we will talk about people who stand for the others and fight unfairness.

To begin with, I will allude to quite ordinary persons, whom we don't even know the existence of : working class people. They are people with low wages, low standard of living. They are only paid for the hours they work. In this way, they find difficult to make ends meet, and they can't really provide for their families.

We have studied the text of Elizabeth Gaskell, entitled Mary Barton, written in 1848. This story shows two English workers who are affected by a fire in their factory. From now on, they are jobless and are in a plight because they can't provide for their families, they are powerless. Indeed, their roots didn't give them an education, therefore they can't protest to assert their rights.

We can also study the black and white photograph taken by Shirley Baker in 1966, entitled Children playing in the streets of Manchester. It depicts a working class neighborhood, with children who are playing with toys in a narrow street. Two women are looking after them, and we can see washing hanging on a line across the street. In spite of their situation, we can feel the joyful atmosphere.

Through these examples, we can see that working-class people are destitute and can't provide for their families. However, they can be considered as heroes because even if they are in dire straights, they don't give up, and are ready to overcome their daily life problems. They fight for their life and their family, and that's why I think they deserve to be recognized as real heroes.

Then, I think we can also name heroes people who struggle against or for a cause. Indeed, our world is based on inequalities, and people fought and still fight against unfairness.

For example we can go on strike to fight against something. That's what happened when Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, privatized state owned companies and curbed the power of Trade Unions. A lot of jobless people went on strike to fight against her law.

On the photograph taken in the 1980s “Thatcher pays police to starve kids”, we can see a lot of women taking part in a sit-in against the pit closures in Yorkshire. They are depicted as heroines because they assert their rights, and even if Thatcher didn't yield, they stuck together to make things evolve to save their families.

To finish with, there are also people who decide to fight against inequalities, like in the film Made in Dagenham, made by Nigel Cole in 2010. In this movie, women who work as sewing-machinist in a factory decide to go on strike because they don't have the same rights as men. Thanks to their action, it paved the way to the “Equal Pay Act” in the 1970s.

People like them can be considered as heroes because they have the courage to fight to assert their rights.

To conclude, even if a “hero” is, according to children, is a person with superpowers, there are also heroes in our daily life. We can allude to working class people, who fight everyday to provide for their family and to survive. They are heroes, as well as persons who stand for the others and fight unfairness, like women in the 1980s.

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