EXPRESSION ET CONSTRUCTION DE SOI

Annales

• « Expression et construction de soi »

   

  1^re partie : Synthèse en anglais (16 pts)

  Prenez connaissance de la thématique ci-dessus et du dossier composé des documents A, B et C et répondez en anglais à la consigne suivante (500 mots environ) :

  Paying particular attention to the specificities of the three documents and taking into account the differences in tone and point of view, show how they interact to depict American society in the 1950s.

   

  2^e partie. Traduction en français (4 points)

  Traduisez le passage suivant du document C en français (lignes 23 à 28) :

  When I was about four my parents bought an Amana Stor-Mor* refrigerator and for at least six months it was like an honored guest in our kitchen. I'm sure they'd have drawn it up to the table at dinner if it hadn't been so heavy. When visitors dropped by unexpectedly, my father would say: "Oh, Mary, is there any iced tea in the Amana?" Then to the guests he'd add significantly: "There usually is. It's a Stor-Mor."

  *Amana Stor-Mor est une marque. À ne pas traduire.

   

  DOCUMENT A - A Supermarket in California

  
  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman¹, for I walked down the side streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

  What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! —and you, Garcia Lorca², what were you doing down by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.

  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

  Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?

  (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

  Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

  Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon³ quit poling⁴ his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

   

  1 Walt WHITMAN: very influential 19th-century American poet, essayist and journalist (1819-1892)
  2 Federico GARCIA LORCA: one of Spain’s greatest poets and playwrights (1898-1936).
  3 Charon: in Greek mythology, he took the newly dead people across the river Acheron to the underworld.
  4 pole: push with a long stick.

  Allen GINSBERG (American poet and writer, 1926-1997), ‘A Supermarket in California’, 1955 from Collected Poems 1947-1980

   

  Document B - Film poster for Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Movie by Nicholas RAY (American film director, 1911-1979)

  

   

  Document C

  I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity. When the war ended the United States had $\$$26 billion worth of factories that hadn't existed before the war, $\$$140 billion in savings and war bonds¹ just waiting to be spent, no bomb damage, and practically no competition. All that American companies had to do was stop making tanks and battleships and start making Buicks and Frigidaires—and boy did they.

  By 1951, when I came sliding down the chute, almost 90 percent of American families had refrigerators, and nearly three-quarters had washing machines, telephones, vacuum cleaners, and gas or electric stoves—things that most of the rest of the world could still only fantasize about. [...]

  I don't know of anything that better conveys the happy bounty of the age than a photograph (reproduced in this volume as the endpapers at the front and back of the book) that ran in Life magazine two weeks before my birth. It shows the Czekalinski family of Cleveland, Ohio—Steve, Stephanie, and two sons, Stephen and Henry— surrounded by the two and a half tons of food that a typical blue-collar family ate in a year. [...] In 1951, the average American ate 50 percent more than the average European.

  No wonder people were happy. Suddenly they were able to have things they had never dreamed of having, and they couldn't believe their luck. There was, too, a wonderful simplicity of desire. It was the last time that people would be thrilled to own a toaster or waffle iron. If you bought a major appliance, you invited the neighbors around to have a look at it. When I was about four my parents bought an Amana Stor-Mor refrigerator and for at least six months it was like an honored guest in our kitchen. I'm sure they'd have drawn it up to the table at dinner if it hadn't been so heavy. When visitors dropped by unexpectedly, my father would say: "Oh, Mary, is there any iced tea in the Amana?" Then to the guests he'd add significantly: "There usually is. It's a Stor-Mor."

  "Oh, a Stor-Mor," the male visitor would say and elevate his eyebrows in the manner of someone who appreciates quality cooling. "We thought about getting a Stor-Mor ourselves, but in the end we went for a Philco Shur-Kool. Alice loved the EZ-Glide vegetable drawer and you can get a full quart of ice cream in the freezer box. That was a big selling point for Wendell Junior, as you can imagine!"

  They'd all have a good laugh at that and then sit around drinking iced tea and talking appliances for an hour or so. No human beings had ever been quite this happy before.

   

  1 savings and war bonds: épargne et emprunts de guerre.

  Bill BRYSON (American-British writer born in 1951), The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, 2006

   

  Afficher la correction

  ---