A lil drabble inspired by my world literature class, and I think we referenced the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I would check for the author and verify this but I’m on a bit of a time crunch here.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was the first proof, as far as the modern world knows. A Mesopotamian story. It follows a plot mountain. It used literary devices. It teaches a moral. And then it was plagiarized.

And every land, every town, every person plagiarized it. Including you.

Because Gilgamesh was plagiarized. From the stone tablets lost to time, and before that, the oral tales. They all taught something, had a storyline. And Gilgamesh copied that.

And then The Aeneid, Oedipus the King (I love this play) and literally everything else. That story you have in your head? Plagiarized. There is no such thing as an original story, because every story requires inspiration, the author, consciously or not using some sort of narrative that they found entertaining in a book they read. The stories those isolated, developing tribes likely tell about the strange giant birds growling in the sky plagerize something they don’t know exists.

With this logic, our thoughts are plagerized. But, we can still be unique. Because Gilgamesh found peace with his mortality, and Oedipus started a family with his mother. It just takes the infusion of all of these repeating themes to reach some sort of independence.

And thanks for attending my TedTalk lol