Guilty By Reason Of Insanity

Thao Nguyen
9/26/2011
English 1020-027: Core Composition I (11:00am-12:15pm)
Ms. Andrea Jones
Third draft for unit one paper assignment: Definition of ORIGINALITY.
Originality is a new idea? No!
In 2004, after reading the script of a Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis was shock because every details in this play were similar to what she used to write in “Guilty by Reason of Insanity” in 1998. A chart of fifteen pages long was made up with the totaling of six hundred and seventy-five words are verbatim similarities. She thought that her life, her work was plagiarized by Lavery. Then she wanted to sue Frozen’s author. However, in “The New Yorker”, Gladwell disagreed with Lewis since Lavery just borrowed some interesting
details from her then add ideas, works, etc.
You might find many mistakes like this in life. People sue each other when their copyright is breached with a vague understanding about originality. However, the result they get is nothing. So what is the good way to avoid wasting our money and our time? A correct definition of originality is the answer. No one is the real creator. Originality is made by relying on other earlier acceptable facts; in other words, combining ideas and explanations about them are the main characteristics of originality.

A suit was happened between McDonald’s and a food store in Malaysia.
McDonald’s sued this store’s owner because he used Mc for his store’s name: McCurry. In the end, McDonald’s lose in this suit due to two reasons. One is that McDonald’s main products are hamburgers while McCurry sells the traditional Indian food; they are completely different so consumers wouldn’t have any mistake in order to distinguish these two stores. Two is that Mc in McCurry means “Malaysia chicken”; McDonald’s can’t make monopoly of the word “Mc”. The Malaysia food store’s owner combined Mc with Curry to make a new meaning that his store serves Malaysian chicken curry in Indian style with the fast way. Then the price that the king of fast food had to pay is $2,900 for the misunderstanding of originality’s meaning. People always think that originality means ideas that are made by creator and are not thought up by another person beforehand. But this thought is wrong. If it is corrected, no more mistakes would make human life being
difficult.
Nothing is created without basing on the earlier acceptable notions. In “Intertextuality and Discourse Community”, Porter stated that the creative writer is the creative borrower (37). What creator borrow is not important; only the new meanings which are got out from the earlier notions are matter. The Declaration of Jefferson could illustrate well this idea. From that Jefferson’s writing, people can found out many traces from other document such as: First Continental Congress resolution, a Massachusetts Council declaration, etc. And, He linked these effective traces together, then, expressed his idea about the basic human right to others. Everyone does still respect Jefferson’s Declaration because the meanings of his works are meaningful to not only the American but also the foreigners. According to his originality – his borrowing creativity- a clearly definition of basic human right help everyone understand correctly what right they must have and fight for.
My experience can also be a good example.
When I was sixteen, I created a weird party to cure one of my best friend’s broken-heart. It was Pajamas Party. What will you think about whenever hearing that party’s name? A party would be organized in bedroom, in night, with close friends; everyone would wear their pajamas, enjoy the scary movies, and share secrets. I come up with those ideas and added some more details to make it more interesting and unique. Candles are one of my new key for my Pajamas party. Look around and you can find out that candles could become the best choices for the spas. They uses candle to help their therapy more effective and their customers could feel completely relax. With beautiful smell, they are the good therapy to reduce the stress. Pajamas are the most comfortable cloth for human. Soft materials are always chosen to make the pajamas. Then they help our body feel completely free so our mind could be rested very easily. Moreover, time also plays an important role in my plan. From the beginning of the evening to the night, human cells stay in the most relaxing state that’s why people’s mind always easygoing after a hard-working day. Then I combined all of these ideas – night, bedroom, pajamas, music, scary movies, and candles- to make a perfect new originality for my friend. It became a good bandage for her broken heart at that time. Thus, originality is a creative borrowing. None is built up without
foundation.
Once again, in “Intertextuality and Discourse Community”, Porter underlined “Creativeness does not consist in producing new sentences” (37). Originality is not made by any individual. As I said in one of my example above, the ideas of Pajamas party come from my experience in life. I put them together and create a perfect originality for myself. That’s how origin is made up. In other words, human made the originality, then, by adding some ideas, individual creators make the new meanings, the new originality. People, nowadays, need to know how to understand the new meaning from creators’ work and stop judge their borrowing.