THE WORLD OUTSIDE

Adam Hochschild (New York, 1942) is an American writer. He is one of the founders of the journal Mother Jones. After he worked as a student in South Africa, he becomes sensitive to the injustices of racism and began to engage in politics. He joined the civil rights movement, he showed against the war in Vietnam and he found a job as a journalist at Ramparts. In his text “The World Outside”, Adam Hochschild tells what he saw and what he experienced in the United States. He denounced fundamental problems in America as the denial of participation in the Kyoto Protocol or the behavior of the U.S in front of the Vietnam War. I will first talk about the disillusion about the United states, to then talk about a nation of enlightenment.

First of all, the author denounces the political problems in the U.S. as the fight against apartheid. Adam Hochschild didn’t imagine the situation as well: “USA was on the wrong side” l5. The narrator seems shocked by the situation. U.S. gives an image which isn’t always true: “told a different story” l7. For example, the author talks about the cooperation between the USA and the white regime in South Africa which never existed. The author knows the subject well because he works for an anti-government newspaper in South Africa. Then he talks about the fact that everybody has discovered the true image of the United States during their involvement in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a cold war military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the U.S. and other anti-communist nations. The first American defeat has shocked the world and tarnished the image and the prestige of this country. America is now a country of disillusionment. Questions arise the country is still as strong,