No New Tale to Tell

From the millions of stories out in the world , there are bound to be stories that sound nearly identical. The Odyssey and Beowulf have identical heroes and yet we consider both to be great Epics. The secret of all of this is that they have stories that have different things to say, with different meanings. All stories have some origin, and nothing can be genuinely original without having a minor point that can be stated as "this or that did this." Now it's easy to point out how all vampires stories take from Nosferatu and not the original Dracula book written by Bram Stroker, even Twilight with its "vampires" , but then i'm only emphasizing how this applies to fictional works. There are many instances of history having similar actions because they were good ideas to begin with and they could, in a way, work in almost any time period.

One great instance of this is the American Revolution influencing the French Revolution. They both share common traits such as:

a monarchy gone corrupt

a war between the monarchy and the civilians

the overthrowing of the monarchy

a time period of bad choices

a much more stable form of society

With this being said, couldn't we say that we could copy and paste either on to the other, change some names around, and it'd be the same thing? Well no, we could not at all. They both share general events, but in no way completely identical. The Americans fought for freedom because they felt that a ruler, who has never seen the colonies in person, could not be fit to run them properly, while the French believed that the monarchy was spending too much money on personal things than on their people. The Americans fought their war using the help of mercenaries and natives who happen to want to see the British lose a hand on their growing empire, while the French did it on their own with the help of people who had right ideas.  Then their's Maximilien de Robenspierre, the articles of confederations, Napoleon Bonaparte, and  all the things that were completely different that the French had done and the Americans didn't, and vice versa.  So while they are the same tune, they told different stories within their grand tale.

However you slice this, there are truly no new tales to be told or written because someone has beaten  another to it, but  that does not mean there is no way to tell a tale that is more memorable than the other,such as the case is for Dracula and Nosferatu, or they could be both be as equally memorable, but for different reasons, such as the French Revolution and the American Revolution.