Now where have I seen him before?
This chapter tells us that "there is no such as a completely original work of literature" and as you become a more experienced reader you will begin to ask yourself, Now where have I seen him before?
As an experienced reader you will come across old friends, well kind of but in a different form. But the idea of the character (old friend) remains the same and the same scenarios are occurring within the story. This allows the text to come alive because you are instantly able to put the dots together and have a greater understanding of the text you are reading because you have come across the idea of this character and it is like seeing an old friend.
The reason Authors use old ideas from other stories, is because he wants the readers to know what he is doing, which brings us the crazy assumption of "There is only one story" This story has been going forever "To me, literature is something like a barrel of eels. When a writer creates a new eel, it wriggles its way into the barrel. Its a new eel, but it shares its eelness with all those other eels that are in the barrel or have been in the barrel" The point the author is trying to get across with this peculiar metaphor is that stories are continuously evolving, and for something to evolve there needs to be a previous version. So authors are continuously trying to grow each others story. Which tells how there is only one story.
an example of these evolved stories would be:
"The jungle book" by Rudyard Kingpin and Neil Gaiman's "The graveyard book" both Mowgli and Bod are very young orphaned children and stumble across an species which are not human and are nurtured by them and brought up by a different species to there own. I mean just look at the title of the books see the similarities?
As an experienced reader you will come across old friends, well kind of but in a different form. But the idea of the character (old friend) remains the same and the same scenarios are occurring within the story. This allows the text to come alive because you are instantly able to put the dots together and have a greater understanding of the text you are reading because you have come across the idea of this character and it is like seeing an old friend.
The reason Authors use old ideas from other stories, is because he wants the readers to know what he is doing, which brings us the crazy assumption of "There is only one story" This story has been going forever "To me, literature is something like a barrel of eels. When a writer creates a new eel, it wriggles its way into the barrel. Its a new eel, but it shares its eelness with all those other eels that are in the barrel or have been in the barrel" The point the author is trying to get across with this peculiar metaphor is that stories are continuously evolving, and for something to evolve there needs to be a previous version. So authors are continuously trying to grow each others story. Which tells how there is only one story.
an example of these evolved stories would be:
"The jungle book" by Rudyard Kingpin and Neil Gaiman's "The graveyard book" both Mowgli and Bod are very young orphaned children and stumble across an species which are not human and are nurtured by them and brought up by a different species to there own. I mean just look at the title of the books see the similarities?