Copy at Your Own Peril: Plagiarism in Old School Anonymous 11th Grade

Over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Aristotle stated that with regards to “the origin of poetic art as a whole…the habit of imitating is congenital to human beings from childhood and so is the pleasure that all men take in works of imitation.” This depiction of poetry illustrates that the impulse to write is derived from an innate tendency to imitate the world around us, a tendency that all men take pleasure in. Similarly, this portrayal of plagiarism as a necessary prerequisite to works of art persists to this day, as Tobias Wolff discusses this idea in his piece Old School through the narrator’s struggles with plagiarism in a school with “a system of honors that valued nothing you hadn’t earned yourself,” an idea “so deeply held it was never spoken” (Wolff 4). This concept of original authorship is heavily contested in the novel, as Wolff provides insight into the positives and negatives of imitating other authors’ works. While indeed punishing the narrator for plagiarizing, Tobias Wolff still suggests that plagiarism stems from admiration for the original writer.

Wolff suggests that the narrator admires Susan Friedman after he plagiarizes from her story for his submission to the school literary contest. Although the...