One Story

1. One Story Ketan Sinha

2. There’s Only One Story “One story. Everywhere. Always. Whenever anyone puts pen to paper or hands to keyboard or fingers to lute string or quill to papyrus. They all take from and in return give to the same story…” (Foster 186). There is only one story in each piece of literature. There may be more than one climax, but the main idea stays intact throughout the story. Take, for example, Harry Potter. There is only Harry Potter’s story in the books. Sure, the villain's story may be introduced from time to time, or a friend may tell Harry about their life sometimes, but the books are always centered around Harry.

3. Pure Originality is Impossible “On one level, everyone who writes anything knows that pure originality is impossible. Everywhere you look, the ground is already camped on. So you sigh and pitch your tent where you can, knowing someone has been there before” (Foster 187). Pure originality is impossible because whatever you write has been done in some way or form before. This is where archetypes come from. There is no “original archetype” and this can be proven. What is Percy Jackson’s, from the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series, archetype? Perhaps it’s the original Peruses.

4. A Lot Can Go Wrong “Writers also have to practice a kind of amnesia when they sit down or stand up to write. The downside of millennia of accumulated practice of any activity is that it’s very…heavy” (Foster 187). What Foster means by “heavy” is that all writers have the responsibility, or at least think they do, of making their literature “better” than the previous writer. This is because every writer wants to be known for his or her literature, and this can only be accomplished if the piece of literature outshines the rest.

5. You Can’t Find the Archetype. “Don’t bother looking for the originals, though. You can’t find the archetype, just as you can’t find the pure myths. What we have, even in our earliest recorded literature, are variants, embellishments, versions, what Frye called “mythic” since those works are displacements of myth. You cannot find the originals in any story. Many people will argue that the original archetypes come from the Bible. However, what about those people who did not have access to the Bible? How were they able to create archetypes? The answer is that they got it from other stories. No one knows the original archetypes.

6. A Story Component Comes Into Being “It [the story component] works so well, for one reason or another, that it catches on, hangs around, and keeps popping up in subsequent stories. That component could be anything: a quest, a form of sacrifice, flight, a plunge into water, whatever resonates and catches our imaginations” (Foster 191). Story components are very important to the overall piece of literature. They drive a story forward. Take, for an example, the quests that the heroes in Greek stories had to face. Without the quest there would have been no story.

7. Everything’s Connected “This highly ungainly word [intertextuality] denoting a most useful notion…anything you write is connected to other written things” (Foster 189). Everything is connected, and this goes back to archetypes. There is an archetype for, suppose, Percy Jackson’s various quests. The archetype is Peruses’ original quests. Characters, quests, memories, tragedies, etc. in any story are probably not original. Everything is connected. It’s kind of like the Internet. You can get hand (or typed) written documents, but the facts in those documents come from other sources, and the facts in those sources come from other sources, and so on.

8. Great Expectations “Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman of you! It’s me wot has done it!...Isn’t there bright eyes somewhere, wot you love the thoughts on?” (Dickens 263-264). The entire “one story” of Great Expectations is wealth. With wealth, Pip can gain love, admiration, respects, and everything else he wanted. However, the story components include the problems Pip has after gaining this wealth.

9. Real Life Everybody has that one singular goal that has more priority than all their other goals. Whether it be going to a top level college, or buying a brand new sports car, or getting promoted to manager at the factory, goals are what drive people forward, just like they drive the heroes of a story forward.

10. Works Cited Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986. Print. Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print