It's safe to say that Donald Murray's article, "All Writing is Autobiographical" and James Porter's article, "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" are far apart in viewpoints when it comes to writing and something being original or not. Murray will argue that all writing is autobiographical whether it's in third person or not. That each work of literature and each student essay written, includes a fragment of that person's knowledge and experiences. But Porter argues in his article that, everything we know is borrowed or has traces from previous things we've known. It's almost as if Murray has a positive outlook on writing and Porter does not since he believes it is all stolen from previous sources we've encountered. I think Murray does a better job drawing in my attention and making me believe his point of view on this topic, however Porter did have some enjoyable things to read in his article. I thought his take on The Declaration of Independence being borrowed traces from other resources was really interesting. Porter says that Benjamin Franklin, does not deserve nearly as much credit as he has been given, because most of the Declaration of Independence was formed from Franklin's knowledge of the past.
Honestly, everyone has a past so it's sort of impossible to completely take what all you've learned and write something. It's physically impossible so that why I agree more with Murray than Porter because Porter might as well mock the the whole system of education if he says everything we write has traces from somewhere else and lacks originality.
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