Mistaken Identity

1461 Words3 Pages

I used to serve tables and one particular table will forever haunt me. After a normal meal, an older gentleman gave me his credit card to pay for his meal. The name on the card was none other than Gordie Howe. I was star struck to say the least. When I approached him, I immediately asked for his autograph on my grandparent’s fiftieth anniversary card. He looked the part and acted the part as well. After giving the card to my grandparents as a gift, I then had it appraised. I was happy to find out an authentic Gordie Howe autograph is worth anywhere from $300 to thousands, pending on the autograph. I was unhappy to find out that the autograph I obtained was not an autograph from Gordie Howe, the famous hockey legend, but the autograph was from someone who happened to look, act, and have the same name as the hockey legend. I never told my grandparents of the worthlessness of the autograph to this day. Mistaken identity can happen anywhere. But when it is in a story or a play, the characters have no control over who they are. The characters with mistaken identity in plays such as “Oedipus the King” and “The Brothers Menaechmus” had very different outcomes. In the following I am first going to define what mistaken identity is, show how mistaken identity helps the reader see that characters have no control over their fate, and show that through mistaken identity characters lives change quickly. Through these three features, I will show that mistaken identity helps make a story interesting to the reader.

First, let us define mistaken identity. To do that, one must define identity of a character, before one can understand what mistaken identity truly is. Character identity in a play is much like identity of any indiv...

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... king was no more. In fact, he was going to look like the opposite. He was going to be everything he lived his life to avoid. He would never get back the honor and pride he once had due to his mistaken Identity.

In hindsight, Oedipus probably should not have killed anyone. Then he might have been able to dodge his fate. Or if Meneachmus 1 had lived a life that was based on deceit of his loved ones, then maybe he could have avoided losing his wife and friends with his new found brother. That is what makes mistaken identity in drama or real life so interesting. It can change ones fate and/or life for the better and sometimes for the worse. Either way mistaken identity is a great way to make a play or situation interesting. Had I known that the man I was getting an autograph from wasn’t the real Gordie Howe, would I have gotten his autograph, probably not?

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