Blog5: "Something Borrowed"

In "Something Borrowed" Malcolm Gladwell discusses plagiarism. He tells the story of Dorthy Lewis and a Broadway play called "Frozen." Lewis is first offended and feels robbed when she finally decides to see Bryony Lavery's play. She sees that Lavery took aspects of her life and study from one of her books and hires a lawyer, about to file for a lawsuit. As she sends Lavery a fax of what she had done, she immediately contemplates her decisions and thoughts. Towards the end of the story, Lewis begins changing her mind on the situation as she talks to Lavery about what happened. She realizes that what Lavery had done was not actually steal her work, but used some of her ideas to create something new. From this story, Gladwell points out that plagiarism is not something so simple. He says that plagiarism is complex because all ideas are all preexisting forms of thought built on new forms of creation. Gladwell states that no person can actually own words but that it depends on exactly what one takes and how much to differentiate between variation and stealing.

I believe Gladwell makes a good point. No one can truly create something and make the rest of the world unable to touch it. A good example of this in the text is Beethoven's work. Although Beethoven created his work on his own variation, there was still pieces before him that had similar parts and themes. I believe the view on plagiarism is very narrow sighted because in all honestly, plagiarism is necessary to a certain extent. If people did not take ideas and base their own on them, we would never progress. We would never see some of the most influencial music, movies, plays, and works because they were all in some way related to something else.