M. Bertin TLLCE- Lycée Paul-Valéry: Essay to be handed in on January 3rd 2022! Merry Xmas!

SYNTHESIS ESSAY + TRANSLATION

Durée : 3h30
Le sujet porte sur la thématique « Expression et construction de soi »

PART 1 (16 pts) : Write a synthesis on the documents (about 500 words)
Taking into account their specificities, analyze how the 3 documents deal with the
importance of having an identity and a personal story.

Partie 2 (4 pts) : Traduisez en français [le passage en gras] dans le document C :

DOCUMENT A

Family Tree
by Saturday Evening
Post illustator Norman
Rockwell , 1959

In 1959, Rockwell began telling his life story to his son Tom Rockwell, who was
ghost writing his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. Recording his
family history may have inspired Rockwell to trace the lineage of an imaginary
American family in a painting.

Explanations from THE NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM , Rutland, Vermont.

DOCUMENT 2
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than
Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone

and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw
my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their
days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what
they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the
letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark
man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also
Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was
freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long,
which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the
memory of five little brothers of mine,—who gave up trying to get a living,
exceedingly early in that universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I
religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands
in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound,
twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of
things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards
evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with
nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also
Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander,
Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were
also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard,
intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it,
was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the
distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the
small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it alland beginning to cry, was Pip.

Incipit of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 1861

DOCUMENT 3

“My obituary. We have to start putting it together now.”

“I’ve never heard of someone writing his own obituary. Other people are
supposed to do it for you—after you’re dead.”
“When they have the facts, yes. But what happens when there’s nothing in the
file?”
“I see your point. You want to gather together some basic information.”
“Exactly.”
“But what makes you think they’ll want to print it?”
“They printed it fifty-two years ago. I don’t see why they won’t jump at the
chance to do it again.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I was dead. They don’t print obituaries of living people, do they? I was
dead, or at least they thought I was dead.”
“And you didn’t say anything about it?”
“I didn’t want to. I liked being dead, and after it got written up in the papers, I
was able to stay dead.”
“You must have been someone important.”
“I was very important.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard of you, then?”
“I used to have another name. I got rid of it after I died.”
“What was it?”
“A sissy name. Julian Barber. I always detested it.”
“I never heard of Julian Barber either.”
“It was too long ago for anyone to remember. I’m talking about fifty years
ago, Fogg. Nineteen sixteen, nineteen seventeen. I slipped into obscurity, as
they say, and never came back.”
“What did you do when you were Julian Barber?”
“I was a painter. A great American painter. If I’d stuck with it, I’d probably
be recognized as the most important artist of my time.”
“A modest assessment, I’m sure.”
“I’m just giving you the facts. My career was too short, and I didn’t do
enough work.”
“Where are your paintings now?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. All gone, I assume, all vanished into thin air.
That doesn’t concern me now.”
“Then why do you want to write the obituary?”
“Because I’m going to die soon. (…) When I moved to Paris in 1920, there was
no need to give anyone the facts. It didn’t matter what they thought anyway.
[As long as I was convincing, who cared what had really happened? I
made up several stories, each one an improvement on the ones that
came before it. I’d pull them out according to the circumstances and
my mood, always changing them slightly as I went along, embellishing
an incident here, perfecting a detail there, toying with them over the
years until I got them just copy. The best were probably the war
stories, I became quite good at those.] I’m talking about the Great War,
the one that ripped the heart out of things, the war to end all wars. You should
have heard me go on about the trenches and the mud. I was eloquent, inspired.
I could explain fear like no one else. (…) The French ate it up, they couldn’t get
enough.”

Moon Palace, Paul Auster, 1989, extract from Chapter 4