Stories Upon Stories

Last year in college I took a literature class that focused on the origins of classic fairytales.  I hadn't realized that every Disney fairytale that I knew had originally came from a previous version from many years ago.  There are probably thousands of versions of every one of these stories and it interested me that a lot of them were very dark and involved death.  Somewhere along the way someone thought to change these stories to be told at a childrens level but there are many adult rated origins that I'd never heard of before.  Now when I read stories I tend to unconciously look for its similarities to other things that I've heard.  As I was reading the beginning of Book IV, Pyramus and Thisbe, I drew a connection to the story of Romeo and Juliet.  These two were so in love that they would do anything to be together and it resulted in confusion and a tragic death.  This also brings me to our professor's point that nothing is original any more and that everything comes from something else.  I think I will probably take that lesson and look for it a lot throughout my life.