Myths And Heros

I’m going to talk about myth and heroes. I will use two documents which are one text and one picture.

The United-States is a mythical country : how many people have dreamed of going there, either to visit or to stay ? Many indeed. Everything is bigger, everything is more beautiful, everything is possible. It is a dream, the American Dream. Then the myth has its heroes of course : and in the United-States there are plenty of them : pioneers and cowboys conquering the Wild West, important men who changed the course of history.

Well, my first document is a photo of Martin Luther King.

In this photo, I saw him in front of a huge crowd in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. He was delivering his famous speech "I have a dream".

What make him a hero ? His charisma, in fact, he is a master in delivering speeches, he knew how to rouse the crowds and he was a non-violent fighter. He was assassinated (heroes often die tragically and violently).

Martin Luther King has become an icon of the fight for equality in the USA and all over the world and many people still refer to him. It is a great myth that many Americans have in common (there is Martin Luther King day on the third Monday of January, it is a public holiday).

Now my second document is the famous speech of Martin Luther King "I have a dream".

In this speech Martin Luther King dreams that one day black people would be equal to white people in America.

In his dream of America, Martin Luther King denounces the conditions of the black people in the U.S. in the past and at the time of his speech, at the end, he says that he has optimism for their future.

Martin Luther King wants to be heard by the whole human race, for that he uses effects of rhetorical devices, such as symbolism with the old Negro spiritual, or imagery with the images from the Bible or from nature. He has weapons, power, it makes him a hero.

To conclude we can say that myths and heroes have changed our lives. Real or not real, they have a capacity to change the minds of many people, to help them and to change the course of history. Heroes do courageous things like help blacks people to be equal to whites people, they fight for something or they want to serve others. They represent a model, an ideal person. And nobody can deny their comportment, they changed the history, our history.

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