Bonjour, j'ai une expression oral demain (niveau LV2) et j'aimerais savoir si dans mon brouillon que je compte apprendre un minimum il y a des fautes de vocs ou autres ;) Merci et bonne journee :)

I'm going to talk about the notion of 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 hero is seen as someone special who does things other people can't. I will ask the following question: How do myths and heroes influence American society? I will focus on witch-hunts, in particular the Salem's witch-hunts of the 17th century, and on McCarthyism three centuries later.

1) In Salem, in the 17th century, a lot of people were accused of witchcraft. In the painting “The Crucible”. A young woman probably a Puritan woman is surrounded by people pointing their fingers at her. It is likely that these gestures of accusation are relating to charges of witchcraft. She looks scared, and seems to not understand the situation. Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, two puritans girls, who feature in the document “Salem, 1692” were both accused of witchcraft. The Puritan Code forbade magic and fortune telling at the time. more than 150 people accused of witchcraft went to jail.

2) Three centuries later, between 1950 and 1960, there was another witch-hunt in the USA called the ‘Red Scare’ or McCarthyism. During this period the US government was afraid of communist foreigners who, according to them, might ‘infiltrate’ the country. McCarthy, a republican senator, was appointed to hunt potential communists. We can see in the comic strip “Guilty by suspicion” that the USA were afraid of the communism- they even accused a young actress of being communist when she was only a little girl. A lot of people were accused of having links with communists, even directors were suspended from their posts. Notably, Eitel, a successful Hollywood film director was accused of being close to the USSR in the document “A suspect”. He was suspected of being a member of the Communist Party, or even a spy for the USSR. Eitel avoided the chairman’s questions by using irony and skirting around the subject. Another filmmaker was accused of being a communist sympathiser because of the ideas he spread thorough his films. Those who were suspected of communism were blacklisted.

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 with the Red Scare so they were paranoid. So, because they are afraid, they rejected people they think possessed, witched, by killing them or condamning them to jail.