Amanda King-Robinson 1

Amanda King-Robinson
Professor Jessy Feveryear
History 1700
1 December 2015
History Rhymes

They say that history repeats itself, however, I like Mark Twains take on the matter. He
said, History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I believe this to be true. As we look back
in history it seems that it repeats because things that happen are so similar, but they are not
exactly the same. Andy Warhol said, Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat
themselves? I will give a few examples of how events that have happened in our history have
seemed so similar it felt as though history was repeating.
Back in 2006 I was working in the financial services industry servicing retirement plans,
mortgages, and life insurance. The housing market was booming. Home loans were easy to get
and people were qualifying for way over what they could afford by doing different types of loans
such as interest only. People were getting great returns on their investments. It seemed all was
well in the market place, but everyone was saying the bubble was going to burst eventually and it
did. In 2007 the economic bubble burst. The stock market plummeted, housing prices dropped to
an all-time low, and unemployment soared. Sound familiar? How about when I tell you it was
deemed the Great Recession? It seemed that Americans we were doomed to repeat the Great
Depression of the 1930s.

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The similarities of the two are remarkable. Both happened after a long period of
prosperity. The banks were experimenting on new ways of doing business, both had bubbles
burst because prices started to exceed what things were actually worth, and the stock market
declined dramatically. The only major difference between the Great Recession and the Great
Depression was the duration, the severity in the unemployment rate, and the amount of banks
that failed. (Pumphrey)
This is just one way I have seen in my lifetime the present rhyme with the past. One last
example I will give is one I wish would never have happened, let alone continue to happen in
different ways. The thing I am speaking of is genocide. Genocide basically means to commit
violent crimes against a group of people with the intent to exterminate them. The genocide most
commonly discussed is the Holocaust. During the Holocaust Germany killed over 11 million
prisoners in concentration camps simply because they were not what Hitler felt was a pure
people. Although many countries have pledged to never let this happen again, it has. Between
1975 and 1979 roughly 2 million people were killed in Khmer Rouge, Cambodia, and in 1994
Rwanda killed between a half million to a million Tutsis. These crimes continue today in other
parts of the world. (Pumphrey)
Once again we see the past rhyming with the present. The only difference we see is the
number of people killed. The Holocaust had the most casualties, but any casualty in the pursuit
of power is one too many.
There are many more examples that could be given as to how the past seems to rhyme
with the present. I believe that no matter how much we learn of our history we are doomed to
either repeat it or watch it be repeated because as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, "If men could

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learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the
light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind."

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Works Cited
Pegoda, Andrew Joseph. "History Repeats Itself, Why I Study History, and History as
a Science." 14 September 2013. 1 December 2015.
<http://andrewpegoda.com/2013/09/14/history-repeats-itself-why-i-studyhistory-and-history-as-a-science/>.
Pumphrey, Clint. "10 Worst Ways History Has Repeated Itself" 13 November 2015.
HowStuffWorks.com. <http://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/10-worst
ways-history-has-repeated-itself.htm> 01 December 2015.
Thaves. "It Was Entertaining At First, But Now History Just Keeps Repeating Itself."
freedah.com, 14
October 2011. 01 December 2015.
<http://www.freeduh.com/2011/10/14/it-was-entertaining at-first-but-now-historyjust-keeps-repeating-itself/>.
Unknown. "Learning Lessons of History." Transmitting the Wisdom of the Ages. ageof-the-sage.org, n.d. 1 December 2015. <http://www.age-of-thesage.org/history/quotations/lessons_of_history.html>.