Myths and Heroes in the American collective consciousness

We began this new theme by mentioning the song of Steppenwolf, Born to be wild. She was written in 1968 and used in the movie Easy Rider. This song talk about the road which represent the freedom who goes against the conventions of the beat generation period. Nature, eternity and adventure are also quoted.

We go one with a second document " The road myth in the U.S.A and the figure of the marginal hero ". It give us informations about the story of the United states with the colonisation, the war of independence and after that, the Declaration of independance in 1776. Then the 19th century was evoked with the "Going West", the "Manifest Destiny" and the Gold Rush in California. We saw the topic of the road wich defines the identity and the way of life that became a myth. Finally, the period of the 1950s and 1960s reveals the appearance of gansters who leave their lives and their families to experience travel and learn about themselves.

The young gansters were illustrates with exemples of movies like Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild One.

To finish, we saw an exctract from the novel of Jack Kerouac, "On the road". This author, who was part of the Beat generation in the 1950s, tell us the story of Dean and Sal, two youngsters driving a Cadillac heading towars Chicago. The two young rebels looking for liberty are a good exemple for this theme of myths and Heroes in America.