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Sujets d'examens
Concours Général des Lycées - Session de 1990 - Epreuve d'anglais
I. VERSION
Dans le texte suivant, traduire de : "Once in the room" jusqu'a... "ambulatory wire tap."
Once in the room, the senator became another person. Dolly recognized the change; she had seen it a
hundred times before, likening it to the man by day who turned into a werewolf at night.
In the case of the senator, it was the political animal. His body relaxed. Everyone in the living room
became a part of his extended family. He was gracious, he was charming. He told Heller that he. had never
looked younger, Justin that he had read with great mterest a piece he had written for the Washington Post, Wini-
fred that she was ageless-'' You evoke a dream ofyouth "-and Frances that if she could market the secret of
her skin, she could make millions. He introduced Leonard with pride, left him under the protection of his
grandmother and his grandfather, and kissed Dolly very tenderly.
She recalled a talk the senator had given some years back at Yale. The subject was politics, and the
senator had begun by saying, " Politics, from the Latin polincus and the Greek politikos, the art of the people,
the art of belonging to the people ".
Did he believe it ? Had he ever believed it ? But there were so many things that were neither black
nor white, but rather defined by a fluid field of changing grays; and he always specified, in his dislike and fre-
quent disgust with the people who ran the government from the White House, taking it out of the president's
hand and into their own, that they lacked the only virtue any government could claim, the process of elec-
tion. They were not elected. They had never gone before the people. They had never touched the people
or felt them. They were of the old, wretched world of kings and courts.
" I think your son is perfectly beautiful", Frances said to Dolly.
"Yes. Thank you."
" I never had a son ", Frances said, " and Webster still feels that life dealt unfairly with him. But they do
say that a son's a son until he gets him a wife, but a daughter's a daughter all of her life."
Richard had warned her about Frances Heller. " She comes off as a total idiot. She may not be smart,
but she's damn cunning and anything you let slip comes right back to Heller. That's why he brings her
along. '' She's useful, a sort of ambulatory wire tap. "
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_2_
Dolly could
not think of anything said here that could be useful to Heller. All her life she
had been
exposed to the conversation-better called chatter- of the rich and
the powerful, and unless it dealt directly
with the business of being rich
and exercising power, it was filled with inanities; and since their women were
excluded
for the most part from the business of getting richer or increasing power, they
spoke of little else other
than inanities. Never had she heard, in the chatter
over cocktails and across dinner tables, philosophy, per-
sonal or otherwise;
curiosity concerning the universe and its ultimate mysteries; thoughts, however
puerile,
about the fate or hopes of man; points of ethics or hints of brotherhood.
Yes, books, when they were marked
as best sellers by the Washington Post, films
and plays occasionally, but without depth and without wit. Long
ago, she had
ceased to be a participant and had become an observer.
" One treasures
the young ", Heller was saying to Elizabeth and Leonard.
" Of course'"',
Elizabeth agreed. " Which is why we have wars and atom bombs."
"
Defense is our gift to the future ", Heller said. He was not tuned to sarcasm.
Dolly
signaled to Richard, and the senator took Elizabeth's arm and announced that dinner
would be
served.
As they marched into the dining room, Richard Cromwell
fought for every step and every word, and he
fought against his inclination
to put his face in his hands and weep. MacKenzie was already in the dining
room,
playing the role of a proper, sensitive British butler, just as he had seen it
done in British films. As the
senator was seated, MacKenzie whispered, "
Senator, sir, them two mothers in the big caddy won't
move. They just sitting
there outside, waiting for terrorists ".
" Fuck them ", the
senator whispered.back into MacKenzie's ear.
As was most frequently the case,
both these men were in perfect accord with each other.
Howard FAST,
The
dinner party, Hodder and Stoughton, NY, 1987, p. 191-194.
II. COMPOSITION
Lire
le texte en entier et répondre en anglais aux questions suivantes :
1.
Political outlooks in the passage.
2. Socializing at the senator's. :
3.
Dolly as a foil in the narrative.
4. To what extent do you share the senator's
definition of politics ?
INDISPENSABLES : 