All New Stories are Interpretations of Old Stories

    For thousands of years, humans have written countless stories of many different genres or themes. Over such a long period, it makes sense why humans have started to use the same basic ideas for stories repeatedly, as all of the core ideas for stories and structures have already been used before. It is impossible to write a truly original piece of writing that doesn't borrow past literature ideas. Whatever type of story you can name, it has probably been written before in many variations. Even this blog post has a basic structure that has been used before in countless blogs: an introduction, a couple of examples, and a conclusion. I'm sure you have seen the first sentence of this post many times before, as it is a tried and true method to start off any essay or introduction. People use the same structures and ideas from previous pieces because they work and sufficiently fulfill the intended purpose. 

    However, this does not mean that every new piece of literature is completely copying their predecessors. To demonstrate, consider the well-known myth of Icarus. We all know how the myth goes; Icarus, trying to escape the Labyrinth, flies too close to the sun, burning his wings and falling to the sea. This has been interpreted in so many different ways, such as in the poems "Icarus" by Edward Field and "To A Friend whose work has come to triumph" by Anne Sexton. Field and Sexton take two contrasting viewpoints on seemingly the same story. Field uses it to demonstrate the failure in modern society, while Sexton looks to Icarus as a model to motivate others to achieve their goals. It's interesting how such a deceptively simple myth can be stretched by different people to fit such drastic narratives. They use the same core idea but put their own spin on it and create a more significant story. 

    This transformation of an existing story heavily reminds me of Meursault's trial scene from the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus. Meursault is put on trial for the murder of an Arab, who he shot pretty much without any reason. This base story is transformed by both his own lawyer and his prosecutor, which is expected from lawyers. Like the writers mentioned before, each lawyer manipulates the story to make it seem that Meursault is innocent or evil, even though he is not either one of those. The two lawyers are essentially writing their own stories based on the original account of the murder to fit their own motives.   

    True human creativity doesn't stem from coming up with entirely original concepts. It comes from altering preexisting ideals to fit a special perspective different from what was intended. All new stories may be just interpretations of older ones, but it doesn't take away from the significance of newer stories.