Splitting a theme from a well-known event and using it in your story

The best themes in my view have a level of universality about them, in that they can be applied to more than one human story. If that is the case, we should be able to split off a theme from a commonly known story or event and use it in another story. I would do that where the event the theme is split from is so commonly known and current that I could not add anything to that story or event by writing about it now, but by using its theme in another story I could highlight the principle in a u...