SYNTHESE

SUJET de Langues, littératures et cultures étrangères et régionales : ANGLAIS

ÉVALUATION de terminale
Epreuve écrite
Durée : 3 heures 30

Le sujet porte sur la thématique « Voyages, territoires, frontières ».

Mardi 25 janvier

Partie 1 (16 pts) : prenez connaissance des documents A, B et C et traitez le sujet suivant en anglais:
Write a commentary on the three documents (minimum 500 words): taking into account the specificities
of each document, highlight the forces that drive man’s desire for exploration and self-discovery.

Partie 2 (4 pts) : traduisez le passage suivant du document B en français.

“By the end of the trip Mike realised he wanted to be a professional explorer, and since then he has been
on a series of increasingly gruelling adventures that have pushed him to the limit.

They include the first solo circumnavigation of the world around the equator with no engine-driven
support in 1999, and becoming joint-first to trek to the North Pole on skis in 2006. He’s also built a successful
side career as a TV host and motivational speaker.” (ll. 10-14)

Le dictionnaire unilingue (non encyclopédique) est autorisé.

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DOCUMENT A

“We all have resilience… You’ve got to make it grow”

1 “I was bitten by a snake and lost my eyesight, and all the feeling in my face. For five days I
couldn't see.”
Mike Horn, 53, is talking about his first major solo expedition, back in 1997, when he crossed
South America, in part by swimming the length of the Amazon.
5 The gruelling six-month trip saw him brave rapids, break his knee going over a waterfall, have
his equipment stolen by local tribespeople, and get shot at from the banks of the river.
The South African-born adventurer also had to hunt and forage for his food, and became a
“host for parasites”, having spent lengthy periods in the river. But he says the snakebite was the
closest shave.
10 […] By the end of the trip Mike realised he wanted to be a professional explorer, and since then
he has been on a series of increasingly gruelling adventures that have pushed him to the limit.
They include the first solo circumnavigation of the world around the equator with no engine-
driven support in 1999, and becoming joint-first to trek to the North Pole on skis in 2006. He’s also
built a successful side career as a TV host and motivational speaker.
15 Mike says he attempted his first expedition aged eight when, without telling anyone, he tried
to cycle from his home in Johannesburg to his uncle’s farm 300 km away.
“I knew it was going to take time, I knew the distances that I could cover, and I was afraid that
my dad would say no. But I wanted the freedom to try.”
When his father, a successful rugby player, realised what had happened, he drove and picked
20 Mike up on the side of the road.
Dad wasn’t angry. “He just said, ‘Tell me what you want to do and I can help you’… He always
gave me the support to try something out of the ordinary.”
After a year of military service with the South African army, fighting in Angola, Mike
completed a sports science degree at the University of Stellenbosch. Keen to get out of apartheid-
25 era South Africa, in 1989, at the age of 24, he moved to Switzerland, his home to this day.
There he became ski instructor, but quickly tired of it, and so decided to embark on a series of
mini-adventures in Peru. These included, in 1995, river-boarding through the Colca Canyon —
one of the world’s deepest canyons — where he braved daily avalanches. […] “We all have
resilience but we need it more or less depending on what we do in life and our social status…
30 You’ve got to make it grow.”

Daniel Thomas, BBC News, 6 April 2020.

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DOCUMENT B

A family during the Great Western Migration, 1866.

http://www.bu.edu/articles/2018/the-american-frontier-shapes-us-today-bu-researchers-say/.

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DOCUMENT C

24-year-old Christopher McCandless, aka “Alexander Supertramp”, writes a letter to Ronald Franz, a retired
army veteran who helped him earlier and who wants to “adopt” him.

INTRODUCTION

1 […] I'd like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a
radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never
have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy
circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are
5 conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give
one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a
man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy
than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you
10 want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and
adopt a helter-skelter1 style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become
accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. […] You had a
wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon,
something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason
15 incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right
back to the same situation which you see day after day after day.
I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful
things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move
around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron,
20 and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move
into an entirely new realm of experience.
You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has
placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have
the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. […]

Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer, 1996

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1
chaotic