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Shakespeare Mistaken Identity

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Published: Mar 13, 2024

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Shakespeare and Mistaken Identity Struggles

This essay will explore the recurring theme of mistaken identity in Shakespeare’s plays. It will examine how characters like Viola in “Twelfth Night” and Rosalind in “As You Like It” use disguise and deception, leading to comedic situations and dramatic irony. The essay will also discuss how Shakespeare cleverly used mistaken identity to comment on social issues, gender roles, and the nature of truth and perception. By analyzing key scenes and characters, the essay will reveal how this theme contributes to the narrative complexity and enduring appeal of Shakespeare’s works. More free essay examples are accessible at PapersOwl about Gender.

How it works

During the era of Shakespeare, often, his plays exposed controversial topics in casual ways masked with humor and entertainment. Within his time of popularity, Queen Elizabeth allowed theater and drama to flourish. Yet, she forbade political and religious topics to be a subject of conversation on stage (Stigler). However, ‘mistaken identity’- a heated political topic in today’s day in age- is addressed in several of his works, and especially his play Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Over the years, many scholars and historians have researched William Shakespeare in many different lights.

Did Shakespeare even write all his plays, if any? Did he even exist, hence there are hardly any records of his life prior to the release of his writings? Was he even British? Was he educated? Was he a humanist? And lastly, did Shakespeare use the concept of ‘mistaken identity’ in his work, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, to subtly reveal the struggle of gender identity within himself?

During the Elizabethan Era there were restrictions on who could participate in plays, more specifically women, as it was viewed as an atrocity. Today, one might view that social structure as patriarchal, but Shakespeare used that to his advantage. Regardless the gender of a character a male had to play the role. Using gender swaps in his plays, Shakespeare finely executed this strategy to add humor and depth in his plots to intrigue audiences. Although there are other Shakespeare plays that involve gender swaps and ‘mistaken identity’, specifically, in Twelfth Night, or What You Will a young female, Viola, disguises herself as a male, Cesario, and gets involved in a love triangle with another man and woman, Orsino and Olivia. While writing the storyline for this play it is possible that Shakespeare is testing the waters of his gender identity and living vicariously through the character of Viola and her alter ego, Cesario, as she grappled with the situation of everyone thinking she is someone she’s not. It is also possible that he is living through the lives of all the actors who would play this role as they would be males playing the part of a female disguised as another male. “As gender theory becomes more prevalent in academic discourse, many academics have begun to examine what romantic and sexual relationships in literature reveal about the way women and men relate to each other and how this relates to the formation and evolution of identity” (Crawley 1).

Many of Shakespeare’s works revolve around a complex dynamic of relationships between men and women. It is because of these complex relationships that it be further considered that Shakespeare struggled with finding his identity by reflecting his thoughts and emotions in his plays. Take note that in Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Orsino expresses to Cesario no woman could ever love him with as much passion and to the same capacity as he loves Olivia.

VIOLA: Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,

Hath for you love as great a pang of heart

As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her.

You tell her so. Must she not then be answered?

ORSINO: There is no woman’s sides

Can bide the beating of so strong a passion

As love doth give my heart. No woman’s heart

So big, to hold so much. They lack retention. (Shakespeare 2.4.86-93).

It’s possible that while writing this conversation, Shakespeare saw himself through the eyes of Viola and wanted to show how differently men and women would interact with him if he were perceived as a woman and not a man in real life. If he saw himself in Viola it raises more questions as to how he perceived others and whether or not he questioned their gender identity as well.

He uses the idea of perceived identity to fuel the plot of this play and to generate conflict between men and women and who they really are. Since only the audience knows Cesario’s true self the claim could be made that Shakespeare saw himself as the audience which further pursues the idea of using this work to express how he saw himself and wanted to present himself to others. The secretive details surrounding Viola’s life may be Shakespeare’s way of revealing what he was hiding in parts of his own life and choosing to write about it in fashion as his own disguise.

There is a theme of underlying humor throughout Twelfth Night, or What You Will, specifically the plot where a prank is played on Malvolio.

MARIA: And on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.

SIR TOBY: What wilt thou do?

MARIA: I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love, wherein by the color of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I can write very like my lady, your niece. On a forgotten matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands.

SIR TOBY: Excellent, I smell a device (Shakespeare 2.3.140-149).

While this may seem like a small side plot that doesn’t directly relate with the main storyline in the play, today it could be compared to the mistake of misusing a preferred pronoun of those who identify as a different gender than they were assigned at birth. Maria writes a letter pretending to be Olivia professing her love for Malvolio and in return he is to perform ludicrous acts to prove his reciprocation of her love. Malvolio appalls Olivia with the instructions he is given because they are not gestures she likes, even though he believes she told him to do them. The consequences of mistaking Maria’s letter for Olivia’s, dressing up in ridiculous clothing, and acting strangely can all be observed as an outlet for Shakespeare’s feelings of not being recognized for who he truly wants to be. Even though this is not directly a physical ‘mistaken identity’, the deception behind the prank has the same outcome. Although this idea is way ahead of his time Shakespeare foreshadowed the future when it came to crossdressing, gender swapping, and ‘mistaken identities’ between men and women.

During this time period plays were a form of entertainment and even the comedies resisted to go against the social norms, but Shakespeare challenged that in some light. Being that females in this era were not treated the same way as men it was certainly unacceptable for them to go against social constructs, such as crossdressing. “Though there is evidence that women acted in street performances, and in other notorious venues, all commercial acting companies of the time were made up entirely of men and it was illegal for women to act on stage professionally until 1661” (Lucas). Since men were the only ones allowed to act, crossdressing among males was popular in theater. 

While women of this era were faced with inequality in real life, in some of Shakespeare’s plays his female characters crossdressing as men allowed for at least fictitious equal rights to that of males during this time. This leads to the belief that Shakespeare not only felt it was more acceptable to write these kinds of roles and characters, since males were actually playing these roles, but also that he was forced to write these works as his only appropriate form of expression. “Although generally a crossdressed man was more acceptable than a crossdressed woman, in Shakespeare’s comedies we seldom encounter men in women’s clothes” (Johnova 66).

In act 1, scene 4 of Twelfth Night, or What You Will Orsino tells Cesario he should deliver his love messages to Olivia for him because he resembles a woman:

Dear lad, believe it.

For they shall yet belie thy happy years

That say thou art a man. Diana’s lip

Is not smoother and rubious. Thy small pipe

Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound.

And all is semblative a woman’s part. (1.4 28-33).

One may not think Shakespeare resembles a woman based on the Chandos portrait of him from the early 1600s, but in his own eyes a female may be what he felt he looked like or resembled in other ways. The irony in the play is that the audience obviously knows Cesario is in fact Viola, a woman. Shakespeare may have intentionally done this to prove that the ‘mistaken identity’ of Viola posing as Cesario changes the way she is treated. Meaning that if Viola revealed her true self Orsino would have never let her into his court, let alone be entitled to a job of importance for him. Shakespeare could have felt this was important to factor in because he saw Viola as a reflection of himself in the way she delivered her presence as Cesario. It is important to note that the reason Orsino wants Cesario to deliver the messages for him is because he thinks Olivia will be more comfortable engaging in a conversation, with the topic of romance at hand, with a feminine looking man. As stated before, Shakespeare could be using the details of Cesario’s looks to describe how he wishes to be perceived through the eyes of others.

Despite the controversial questions surrounding William Shakespeare’s life, there is no one conclusion to how he viewed himself for he could be the only one to answer that. There is no proven indication that he struggled with finding his gender identity but there is evidence to be pondered about ‘mistaken identity’ in Twelfth Night, or What You Will, among some other works of his, that support this thesis. Given the background of his era with regards to how women were treated, the rules and regulations of theatrical displays, and social constructs it should be highly considered that the use of ‘mistaken identity’ in his works portrays the gender hierarchy from his life. Specifically, in Twelfth Night, or What You Will the consequences of ‘mistaken identity’ are detrimental even for a comedy with a light-hearted ending. As the audience knows the true identities of all the characters in the play, Shakespeare knows the true identity of himself even if he was struggling. Today in society, ‘mistaken identity’ and the research around gender identity is continuing to grow but it is not far off from the time Shakespeare wrote his plays and can continue to be a reference of ‘what is, always has been’.

Works Cited

• Crawley, Jocelyn. On Gender and Identity in Three Shakespearean Texts. New Hampshire: Southern New Hampshire University: 2010. Web Print.
• Garcia, Lucas. “Gender on Shakespeare’s Stage: A Brief History.” Explore the Art, 21 Nov. 2018, www.writerstheatre.org/blog/gender-shakespeares-stage-history/.
• Gross, Stephen. “The Orsino Complex: Men Who Love Themselves as Love Objects.” Psychodynamic Counselling, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, pp. 203–220., doi:10.1080/13533339808404180.
• Johnova, Lucie. “Patterns of Crossdressing in Shakespeare’s Comedies.” pp. 66–69.
• Roberts, David. “James C. Bulman, Ed. Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance.Frank Occhiogrosso, Ed. Shakespearean Performance: New Studies.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, 2009, pp. 526–528., doi:10.1353/shq.0.0110.
• Severn, John R. “All Shook Up and the Unannounced Adaptation: Engaging with Twelfth Night’s Unstable Identities.” Theatre Journal, vol. 66, no. 4, 2014, pp. 541–557., doi:10.1353/tj.2014.0115.
• Stigler, Brittany. “Gender Swaps in Shakespeare Plays.” THIRTEEN, www.thirteen.org/program-content/gender-swaps-in-shakespeare-plays/.
• Wells, Stanley. “Boys Should Be Girls: Shakespeares Female Roles and the Boy Players.” New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2, 2009, pp. 172–177., doi:10.1017/s0266464x09000268.
• Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays, the Sonnets. Greenblatt, Stephen, et al., editors. 3rd ed. Norton, 2016, pp. 487-541. 

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10 Terrible Cases of Mistaken Identity

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It's often said that we all have a double somewhere in the world. It's a haunting thought. In a sense, our identity is all we have. When it fails to form properly, we struggle psychologically. When it's stolen, we face fraudulent bills, ruined credit and a years-long nightmare of red tape. And when it's mistaken, well, far worse outcomes might await.

Perhaps that's why, in so many legends and weird tales stretching back centuries, encountering one's doppelganger tends to end badly. Thankfully, we live during the age of fingerprints, DNA and CSI, in the post-911 world of ever-more Orwellian identification requirements, and we've left cases of mistaken identity firmly in the past.

Well, perhaps not. According to a 2012 report in the Denver Post , "More than 500 people were wrongly imprisoned in Denver's jails over seven years, with some spending weeks incarcerated or pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit."

Such stories provide sobering reminders that a world run by bureaucrats contains at least as much of Kafka as Orwell — and maybe a touch of Rod Serling, as well. The people you are about to meet would no doubt agree.

• 'Casino Royale' Craps Out
• The Assassin Who Stole My ID
• The Two William Wests
• The Unfortunate Adolf Beck
• Worst Stork Ever: Medical Identity Theft
• Bartender Shaken by DNA Mix-up
• Transplant Recipient Chilled to the Marrow
• Identical Twins Beat the Rap(s)
• Single White ... Male?
• The Taylor University Car Crash

10: 'Casino Royale' Craps Out

We begin with a lighthearted example of how mistaken identity can have unexpectedly expensive consequences, especially when it brings together a big-mouthed executive and a short-tempered performer.

Comedic acting legend Peter Sellers had a reputation for being difficult to work with. He was also a talented mimic and a bit of a smart aleck. So when Leo Jaffe, chair of Columbia Pictures, mistook him for his "Casino Royale" costar Woody Allen, he decided to roll with it. Unfortunately, Jaffe wanted to complain to "Allen" about Sellers, saying he wished they'd never signed him to the movie. Sellers became so incensed that he left the set — and the country. Perhaps he was especially upset because this wasn't the first time such a mistake had occurred. It had happened often on the set of "What's New Pussycat," which had especially irked Sellers, who at the time was at the height of his career while Allen was a relative neophyte [source: Lewis ].

The film never recovered. In the end, Columbia finished it using stand-ins while editors struggled to cobble together something intelligible from existing footage [source: Lewis ]. Today, the 1967 spy comedy is known in film circles as a legendary fiasco, but most agree there's plenty of blame to go around for the debacle, Sellers' tirade notwithstanding [source: Sikov ].

9: The Assassin Who Stole My ID

Imagine checking in with your favorite news source only to discover that officials in Dubai are looking for you in connection with a murder. And they're not seeking someone with your name or who vaguely matches your appearance — they want you specifically . You know this because they've published images of your passport ... except it isn't quite right. That's not your picture, or your signature, or your date of birth, but the rest is spot-on.

Now imagine the murder in which you're implicated is the assassination of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

That was the situation faced in 2010 by 26 westerners living in Israel, including Australian citizen Nicole McCabe, who was six months pregnant at the time and probably needed all that sleep she was about to lose thinking about death squads bent on payback [sources: ABC News , Herald Sun ].

An intelligence expert told the Herald Sun of Victoria, Australia, that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which prefers to use real identities as covers for its agents, saw the large number of foreigners living in Israel as a perfect source. It didn't matter that they'd never been to Dubai, or that their passports had never been stolen — because the information was lifted from government databases, it remained beyond their control from the beginning.

At last report, the Australian government had offered little help to McCabe and her two fellow Aussies beyond a new passport. They strongly advised her to take it: The old one was likely to land her on wanted lists everywhere she traveled [sources: ABC News , Herald Sun ].

8: The Two William Wests

Around the turn of the 20th century, criminals arrested in certain jurisdictions were put through a kind of anthropometry , a series of facial, skull and bodily measurements intended to serve as identification. Fingerprinting hadn't yet caught on, and the version of this procedure pioneered by French police officer Alphonse Bertillon was considered state-of-the-art.

So naturally, when the good people of New York sent Will West to Leavenworth prison, the record clerk followed procedure: He took West's measurements and sorted through the piled identification cards until one name remained: William West. This was bad news for Will, who claimed never to have had a previous run-in with the New York police. But there was his name, along with a set of nearly identical Bertillon measurements. Even the photograph on record was his spitting image [sources: Iowa Department of Public Safety , Olsen , Trimm ].

Except it wasn't him. The William West on record, his near physical twin , was already in Leavenworth, serving a life sentence for murder. The discrepancy was soon resolved via fingerprints, and textbooks and speeches still cite the case as a classic example of the technique's usefulness. It's unclear what the consequences might have been for Will had the mistake not been caught; but at the very least, he likely would have received a harsher sentence for repeat offense [sources: Olsen , Trimm ].

7: The Unfortunate Adolf Beck

Con artists say that an ideal persona should be charming but easily forgotten. The man who traveled under the names John Smith and Lord Wilton de Willoughby in 1877 and 1896, the same man who convinced women to part with their jewelry in exchange for rubber checks, was clearly a student of that school. Unfortunately for Adolf Beck, he bore a superficial resemblance to the man in question.

By now, you see where this is going.

Tragically, the entire matter might have been cleared up had the courts simply considered certain evidence, such as the fact that Beck was in Peru during the initial crime spree, or the somewhat more delicate detail that the original criminal (whose real name was possibly Frederick Meyer) was circumcised while Beck was not (that measurement was not among the Bertillon instruments). Instead, legal miscarriages multiplied into 15 convictions and 7 years of penal servitude [sources: Cathcart , Porter , Sydney Morning Herald ].

However, the British courts had not finished with Beck. Three years after his release, the 60-year-old man was convicted of more Lord Willoughby crimes and faced an additional four to five years in prison. Happily, while Beck was locked up for the second time, the original crook was caught in the act. The Crown eventually released Beck and, thanks to public outcry, awarded him a sizable £5,000 in compensation. The case has since become a mainstay of British legal lore and a demonstration of the unreliability of eyewitness identification — at least 16 people positively identified Beck [sources: Cathcart , Porter , Sydney Morning Herald ].

6: Worst Stork Ever: Medical Identity Theft

Which would you rather have screwed up: Your credit history or your medical history? No need to answer. Thanks to medical identity theft, in which people use stolen identities to have medical procedures or expensive surgeries, you can have both.

Don't worry; it's even worse than it sounds. Take the case of Anndorie Sachs, a mother of four in Salt Lake City, Utah, who ended up on the wrong side of the law when a hospital reported that a newborn child under her name tested positive for illegal drugs . Problem was, it wasn't her newborn [sources: Engeler , Johnson ].

Eventually, it emerged that a pregnant drug user had broken into Sachs's car, stolen her ID and had the baby under her name, leaving her with a $10,000 medical bill and a lot of explaining to do. Even after the truth came out (and after social services had interrogated her children), Sachs was not cleared until a DNA test proved the baby wasn't hers [sources: Engeler , Johnson ].

Her legal and financial troubles behind her, Sachs now faces another problem: The thief might have provided different medical information to her doctors, which would have been listed under Sachs's name. However, Sachs has a blood clotting disorder and could die if given the wrong blood type. The hospitals say they've addressed these issues, but Sachs can't be sure, because privacy laws prevent them from showing her the records [sources: Engeler , Johnson ].

5: Bartender Shaken by DNA Mix-up

In 2003, British police arrested bartender Peter Hamkin on suspicion of murdering a woman in Italy the year before. Now, bartenders know a lot of tricks, but killing complete strangers in countries they've never visited is not among them. Was this another case of eyewitness accounts gone wrong? No, although officials said he matched the description of the assailant. This time, the culprit was that unassailable mainstay of crime procedurals, DNA [source: Geddes ].

DNA database matching actually compares only a selection of subsites on the strand known as loci . American labs use 13 loci, while in the UK 10 is the magic number, and suspects need not match all of them. If that sounds scary, consider this: Because countries don't always use the same areas, a proposed pan-European database would require a mere six loci for a match [source: Geddes ].

This number once seemed like plenty — experts placed the chances of a false match among unrelated people at 1 in 113 billion. But in 2008 Arizona state crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer found dozens of such matches when using the nine-loci standard common at the time, which suggests the subject might benefit from some reconsideration. It also sent lawyers nationwide on a genetic fishing expedition [source: Felch and Dolan ].

Luckily for Hamkin, his initial match was not the end of the story. After a more detailed DNA comparison, he was exonerated and released, having spent 20 days in jail [source: Geddes ].

4: Transplant Recipient Chilled to the Marrow

The previous story showed how the half-dozen to dozen DNA markers used in database matches could send police knocking down the wrong door. But can a true match still point to the wrong suspect?

Have you read the title of this article?

Police investigating one particular sexual assault case must have thought the case was going well. They had a semen sample with useable DNA, and it matched DNA of an Alaskan man already in the system. There was just one hitch: The man in question had been in jail when the crime was committed. Was it a mix-up in the system? No, although that's what technicians thought at first. In truth, the solution was even stranger: One year earlier, the jailed man had received bone marrow from the actual assailant, his brother [sources: Aldhous , BBC ].

Today, bone marrow recipients sometimes retain some of their own marrow and end up with mixed genetic profiles. But in this case, the jailed man had lost all of his original marrow, and so he registered as a full match for the criminal in question [sources: Aldhous , BBC ].

By the way, mixed DNA can also show up in cheek swabs if you've been smooching. According to a 2013 study, DNA can linger in your mouth for up to an hour, a fact that could potentially help catch sexual predators [source: New Scientist ].

3: Identical Twins Beat the Rap(s)

No list of mistaken identity would be complete without a few evil twins . Here are a few cases in which a criminal used his fellow monozygote to escape justice.

Our first case takes us to Germany's famous Kaufhaus des Westens, the largest department store in continental Europe. In January 2009, one of the three thieves in masks and gloves who stole $6.8 million in jewelry from the KaDeWe left behind a latex glove. When die Polizei ran a DNA test on the sweat found within, they identified two matches: 27-year-old identical twins Hassan and Abbas O. (German law prevents their full names being used). Unfortunately for the officers, the thief did not leave behind a fingerprint: Identical twins have distinctive fingerprints, but they share 99 percent of the same DNA. Unable to pin down which brother, if not both, committed the heist, they had to let them both go [source: Himmelreich ].

The news provides plenty of other evil-twin examples. In 2009, identical twins in Malaysia escaped a death sentence for narcotics trafficking when prosecutors failed to prove which one owned the smack. In 2011, an Arizona nightclub murder went unresolved because eyewitnesses disagreed about which twin actually did the killing [source: Palmer ].

Although eyewitness accounts will likely always pose a problem, the science of epigenetics , reportedly holds some promise of distinguishing the DNA of twins [source: Palmer [url='http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/08/true_crime_with_twins_can_identical_twins_get_away_with_murder_.html']]. Epigenetic factors change how the same genes are expressed differently in different people due to environmental factors, life events or the substances we consume.

2: Single White ... Male?

It would be irresponsible (not to say libelous) to assign a psychological diagnosis to our next case, even if drawing parallels to the film "Single White Female," which portrayed a woman with borderline personality disorder slowly assuming her roommate's identity , is inevitable.

One day in 2007, Brittany Ossenfort and her boss received a phone call asking for $1,050 to bail someone out of the Orange County Jail. The jailbird? Someone named Brittany Ossenfort. Yes, in an extraordinary collision of identity theft and bad judgment, Brittany's 18-year-old male friend, Richard Lester Phillips, had propositioned an undercover cop for a $30 sex act and been booked under her name. Ossenfort knew that her 5-foot-3-inch, 95-pound (1.6-meter, 43-kilogram) friend was a cross-dresser, but the rest no doubt came as something of a shock. Phillips convinced the police well enough to be housed with female inmates, so ... well done?

The matter was soon cleared up — sort of. Because policy forbids jail officials from altering name information in the computer database after booking, this crime will remain listed under Ossenfort's name. In fact, Ossenfort must now carry paperwork with her verifying that she has never been accused of prostitution, just in case police ever stop her and pull up her record. But hey, at least they took the information down from their website — eventually [source: Lundy and Hunt ].

1: The Taylor University Car Crash

On a late spring day in 2006, a deputy coroner and a chaplain drove to a Michigan home to deliver the opposite sort of news that these trips usually entailed: They were going to tell the mother and father of Whitney Cerak that their daughter was alive. It was bound to be a bit of a shock. They thought they had buried her weeks earlier [sources: Myers , WTHR].

On April 26, 2006, a semi-truck driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, causing his truck to cross a median and crash into a Taylor University van containing nine people. One of the worst crashes in local memory, it killed five and hurled bodies and belongings more than 50 feet from the impact site. In the rush to save lives, a first responder had loaded Cerak into the evac chopper along with the ID of the deceased Laura Van Ryn — who closely resembled Cerak in hair color, bone structure and build [sources: Myers , WTHR].

In the weeks that followed, while Cerak slowly recovered from a closed head injury, 1,400 people, including members of her family, friends and classmates mourned her loss and attended her funeral, while Van Ryn's loved ones waited for the person they thought was their daughter to recover. Eventually, as the patient's behavioral inconsistencies mounted, they could no longer ignore their suspicions. Finally, when a therapist asked her to write her name, the truth was there in black and white: "Whitney" [sources: Myers , WTHR].

Lots More Information

Author's note: 10 terrible cases of mistaken identity.

"The innocent have nothing to fear," eh? After researching this piece, I'm not so sure. Granted, most of these extreme examples involved flukes, but I turned up scores of other examples just like them. By the way, research shows that people are terrible eyewitnesses; it also reveals that juries are inordinately swayed by evidence that sounds like it came out of a CSI episode. So I think the lesson here is that due process, appeals and other legal protections are something that we want to keep around.

Or is it that, alibi-wise, jail is the safest place to be?

Related Articles

• How Bloodstain Pattern Analysis Works
• How DNA Profiling Works
• How Fingerprinting Works
• How Identity Theft Works
• Will we ever be able to transplant DNA?

More Great Links

• Gallery of Bertillon Instruments
• Whitney Cerak's blog
• USA.gov: Identity Theft
• ABC News (Australia). "'No Help' for Australian Caught Up in Dubai Hit." March 3, 2010. (May 8, 2016) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-27/no-help-for-australian-caught-up-in-dubai-hit/344994
• Aldhous, Peter. "Bone Marrow Donors Risk DNA Identity Mix-up." New Scientist. Oct. 27, 2005. (May 10, 2016) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825234-600-bone-marrow-donors-risk-dna-identity-mix-up/
• BBC. "Fears Over Transplant DNA Mix-ups." Oct. 27, 2005. (May 10, 2016) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4378044.stm
• Cathcart, Brian. "The Strange Case of Adolf Beck." The Independent (UK). Oct. 16, 2004. (May 4, 2016) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-strange-case-of-adolf-beck-535209.html
• Engeler, Amy. "The Identity Theft You Haven't Heard of...Yet." WebMD Feature from "Good Housekeeping" Magazine. (May 9, 2016) http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/id-theft-you-havent-heard-yet
• Felch, Jason and Maura Dolan. "FBI Resists Scrutiny of 'Matches.'" Los Angeles Times. July 20, 2008. (May 10, 2016) http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20
• Geddes, Linda. "DNA Super-network Increases Risk of Mix-ups." New Scientist. Aug. 31, 2011. (May 10, 2016) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128285-500-dna-super-network-increases-risk-of-mix-ups
• Herald Sun (Australia). "Meet Mum-to-be 'Assassin' Nicole McCabe." Feb. 26, 2010. (May 8, 2016) http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/meet-australian-woman-nicole-mccabe-set-up-in-spy-scandal/story-e6frf7l6-1225834556008
• Himmelreich, Claudia. "Despite DNA Evidence, Twins Charged in Heist Go Free." Time. March 23, 2009. (May 10, 2016) http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1887111,00.html
• Iowa Department of Public Safety. "The Identification of the 'West Brothers.'" Fingerprint Card & Final Disposition Report Procedures Manual: Section 2. (May 15, 2016) http://www.dps.state.ia.us/DCI/supportoperations/Information/records/fingerprint_procedures_manual_section_2.pdf
• Johnson, Caitlin. "Protect Against Medical ID Theft." CBS. Oct. 9, 2006. (May 9, 2016) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/protect-against-medical-id-theft/
• Lewis, Roger. "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers." Hal Leonard Corporation. 1997.
• Lundy, Sarah and April Hunt. "Fingerprints Foil His Attempt to Assume Her Identity in Jail." Orlando Sentinel. July 21, 2007. (May 9, 2016) http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2007-07-21/news/TRANSVESTITE21_1_ossenfort-richard-phillips-brittany
• Myers, Zach. "Taylor University Remembers Lives Lost, Case of Mistaken Identity on 10-Year Anniversary of Crash." Fox 59 News. April 25, 2016. (May 8, 2016) http://fox59.com/2016/04/25/taylor-university-marks-10-year-anniversary-of-crash-identity-mistake/
• New Scientist. "Lingering Kiss: DNA Persists in the Mouth After Smooch." Jan. 23, 2013. (May 10, 2016) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729014.900-lingering-kiss-dna-persists-in-the-mouth-after-smooch
• Olsen, Robert D. "A Fingerprint Fable: The Will and William West Case." Identification News. Vol. 37, No. 11. 1987. (May 15, 2016) http://www.mcclurgscience.com/uploads/2/6/5/7/26572932/a_fingerprint_fable.pdf
• Osher, Christopher N. "Wrongfully Jailed: Records Detail More Than 500 Mistaken-identity Arrests in Denver in Seven Years." The Denver Post. Jan. 8, 2012. (May 14, 2016) http://www.denverpost.com/ci_19697991
• Palmer, Brian. "Can Identical Twins Get Away With Murder?" Slate. Aug. 23, 2012. (May 10, 2016) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/08/true_crime_with_twins_can_identical_twins_get_away_with_murder_.html
• Porter, Chester. "The Conviction of the Innocent: How the Law Can Let Us Down." Random House. 2007.
• Sikov, Ed. "Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers." Hachette. 2003.
• Swickard, Joe et al. "Mistaken Identities: Confusion of Horrific Accident Resulted in Wrong Tag." USA Today. June 3, 2006. (May 8, 2016) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-04-mistakenID_x.htm
• The Sydney Morning Herald. "The Adolph Beck Case." Nov. 29, 1904. (May 4, 2016) http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/14645349
• Trimm, Harold H. "Forensics the Easy Way." Barron's Educational Series. 2005.
• WTHR. "Crash Victims' Identities Mixed Up." (May 8, 2016) http://www.wthr.com/story/4970548/crash-victims-identities-mixed-up

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How mistaken identity can lead to wrongful convictions

Lecturer, Macquarie University

Disclosure statement

Hayley Cullen previously worked on a voluntary basis for Not Guilty: The Sydney Exoneration Project, an organisation that reviews cases of potential wrongful conviction. She was not involved in any of the cases discussed in this article.

Macquarie University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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In March 1976, American Leonard Mack was convicted of sexual assault and holding two female victims at gunpoint. In September 2023, Mack’s wrongful conviction was finally overturned by a New York judge on his 72nd birthday with the help of the Innocence Project , an organisation that uses DNA evidence to prove factual innocence.

Mack’s conviction took 47 years to overturn. He served seven-and-a-half of these years in a New York prison. His case is the longest in United States history to be overturned using DNA evidence.

In June 2023, a similar historic moment occurred in Australia. Kathleen Folbigg was pardoned and released after 20 years in prison for the murder and manslaughter of her four young children.

Considered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history, Folbigg’s release has sparked discussion over whether Australia needs a formalised body to deal with post-conviction appeals.

Read more: 'Serial' podcast's Adnan Syed has murder conviction vacated. How common are wrongful convictions?

Mack and Folbigg are only two individuals on different sides of the world who have spent decades fighting to prove their innocence.

Many others are still fighting. The prevalence of wrongful convictions is hard to determine. The National Registry of Exonerations in the United States has recorded 3,396 exonerations nation-wide since 1989.

But data on official exonerations fail to capture the many individuals whose convictions are yet to be overturned.

Estimates of the prevalence of wrongful convictions in the United States range from 0.5 to 5% . The exact prevalence in Australia is less clear but we do know 71 cases of wrongful convictions have been identified in Australia between 1922 to 2015.

Some have argued there could be 350 convictions per year of individuals who are factually innocent in Australia.

A witness mistakenly identifying an innocent suspect is common in many wrongful conviction cases.

Eyewitness misidentification is the leading contributing factor in wrongful convictions overturned by the Innocence Project , present in 64% of their successful cases.

In Australia, 6% of recorded wrongful convictions involved an eyewitness error.

This may be an underestimate given many applications to innocence initiatives in Australia alleging wrongful conviction, such as the Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative , report eyewitness evidence as a potential contributing factor.

Read more: Kathleen Folbigg pardon shows Australia needs a dedicated body to investigate wrongful convictions

In Mack’s case, two victims misidentified him as the perpetrator. These identifications proved to be instrumental in his wrongful conviction. How did the two victims get it wrong?

How problematic procedures influence eyewitnesses

Eyewitness identification evidence relies on witnesses to accurately remember criminal perpetrators. Several factors affect eyewitness memory accuracy. Features of the crime can impact memory, such as whether it was light or dark, or whether the perpetrator wore a disguise.

Memory can also be affected by characteristics of the witness at the time of the crime, such as their stress or intoxication levels.

These factors are present at the time of the crime and cannot be changed. What is perhaps more crucial is that eyewitness memory can also be affected by the procedures law enforcement use to collect identification evidence.

In Mack’s case , there were serious problems with the procedures used to get the identifications from the victims. One of the victims made three separate identifications of Mack. Witnesses should only complete one identification procedure for each suspect, because the first identification will bias future identification attempts.

For two of the identifications the victim made, she was only shown Mack by himself surrounded by police. Showing a lone suspect without any other lineup members may increase mistaken identifications , particularly when the context in which they are shown is highly suggestive.

Seeing Mack in handcuffs and in the presence of police may have led the victim to identify him. Mack was the only person shown to the witness in these identification attempts, so the police officers organising the process knew he was the suspect.

“Single-blind” administration of identification procedures – where the police officers organising the lineup know who the suspect is – increase the likelihood of mistaken identifications .

For the other identification this victim made, she picked Mack out of a photo lineup containing seven images. Mack’s photo was the only photo in the lineup that contained visible clothing and the year (1975) in the background. All members of a lineup must be matched and no one lineup member should stand out , but Mack’s photo was distinct.

With all these problematic practices combined, we can see how Mack was misidentified and convicted.

Read more: Kathleen Folbigg is free. But people pardoned and exonerated of crimes face unique challenges when released from prison

In 2020, a team of eyewitness experts published nine evidence-based recommendations for conducting identification procedures.

These recommendations serve to reduce mistaken identifications and enhance accurate ones.

The recommendations address the problematic practices in Mack’s case, but also include things like making sure there is sufficient evidence to place a suspect in a lineup, and giving appropriate instructions to witnesses during the procedure.

Identification procedures should also be video recorded to identify any poor practices.

While these recommendations will go a long way to reducing wrongful convictions resulting from faulty eyewitness identifications, they will only be effective if followed by police.

The next step is ensuring these recommendations are embedded into everyday policing practice.

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How to Handle a Mistaken Identity

Who are you really? Are you what other people think you are? Are you what you think you are? Or are you something else?

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A catalyst for your calling

The other week, I ran into Ben, a former pastor who has started coaching young successful men in how to not burn themselves out and balance their lives.

We caught up, and he told me that coming to Tribe Conference last year was a catalyst for him in quitting his job to go all in on his passion, something he considered a “calling.”

It took a lot for Ben to do this—he needed encouragement, bravery, and action. And for years, he didn't initiate the change, because he was scared.

We all do this. It's hard to move beyond our doubts if we are surrounded by people who don't understand or support our dreams.

Our environment, in many ways, dictates where we go in life.

The mistaken identity of a paper “boy”

When I was twelve, I had long hair and was more than just a little chubby. I wore baggy jeans and loose T-shirts to conceal the shape of my body, as any self-conscious pre-adolescent would do. Puberty was still a few years away then, so any masculine features like facial hair, were nonexistent.

I was often mistaken for a girl.

That year, I got my first job, delivering newspapers for the Beacon News. After a month on the job, I went door to door collecting dues and met one of my clients, an older gentleman, who was retired. As he paid me for a month's worth of work, plus a generous tip, he said, “Well, aren't you an enterprising young lady! I have no doubt you're going to be a very successful entrepreneur one day.”

As I stood there, staring at him blankly, he placed several crisp dollar bills in my hand, smiled, and closed the door. In that moment of mistaken identity, I was too embarrassed to correct him and felt even more awkward doing so later.

So I just learned to live with it. I could be a young lady once a month for a man who paid me well. Oh, wow. That sounds terrible.

Anyway, I thought it was no big deal. But over time, his comments started to wear on me. It unnerved me, because he believed something about me that wasn't true. But I didn't know what to do.

What do you do when a person thinks you're one thing and you're secretly something else? Avoiding the issue seemed the easiest path. So I quit the job.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing kept happening. People kept assuming I was one thing when I was, in fact, something else, and I didn't know how to address that. So I would often just go along with that story. When we don't know the theme of our own story, someone else will just make one up for us.

[share-quote via=”JeffGoins”]When we don't know the theme of our own story, someone else will just make one up for us.

Masquerading as a marketing director

Years after my first job as a paperboy, I had another job as a marketing director. This was my first real job after college, and so I attached a lot of significance to it. I started out as a copywriter but over the years was promoted to a director position and at one point had about a dozen people reporting to me. It was a great job that allowed me to learn so many great skills.

But it was also a role that I was given when I didn't know who I really was.

During my fifth year working at the nonprofit, I realized this was not where I was supposed to be, that my life's work lay elsewhere. I didn't know where, but I was determined to find out.

So I started writing every day and publishing my thoughts and ideas on a blog. People started to read it, and I began calling myself a writer. The more I did this, the more other people believed it, and the more I believed it myself. Eventually, it became true.

Even when I left that job to write full-time, I was scared. Scared of what people might think. Scared of rejection. Scared of my boss's disapproval. But it took the advice of a friend and mentor—”you need to consider the possibility that this might be your calling”—to finally step into my true self.

Your identity is who you become

What I now understand is that it wasn't about writing. It was about trusting myself, believing the voice inside me that whispered “there's more” and learning to follow wherever that led. I'm still doing this today, fighting the roles that are placed on me by others to find the next, true step.

It took a long time for me to realize I didn't have to assume the identity other people gave me. I could be myself, even when others misunderstood or even disliked that. I could even change who I wanted to be, reinventing and recreating myself whenever the role I'm playing doesn't work any more. You can, too.

This is what it means to “find your calling.” It's not about what we do. It's about who we become. The reason many of us never become our true selves is because it's easier to play a role than it is to become the person you're meant to be.

It's easier to conform to people's expectations. But this is not the way great art is made. Eventually, you have to decide who you are.

We don't fake it till we make it. We believe it till we become it. And it takes the right environment and the right people to help make that happen.

[share-quote via=”JeffGoins”]We don't fake it till we make it. We believe it till we become it.

If you need help with this, and we all do, I recommend surrounding yourself with the people who will encourage you, someone who will hold that space for you to become what you are.

Tribe Conference has been a catalyst for many people to do just that. All it is, is a gathering of people who care, who believe they have something to say and want to share their messages with the world.

If that's what you want, we'd love to be that community that helps you get where you're going. Of course, a conference is just the beginning. It's the community that really sustains you. A gathering is a great way to begin the next step in the journey, which is connecting more deeply with those who will journey with you.

I'd love for you to come to Tribe Conference, find your people, and get the guidance you need to share your words with the world.

Click here to grab your ticket for next month’s event before they sell out. We only have a few left!

Are you getting the help and encouragement you need to realize a dream? Share in the comments and tell me what's going on with you.

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What Does A Case of Mistaken Identity Mean?

Home » Phrase and Idiom Dictionary » What Does A Case of Mistaken Identity Mean?

A Case of Mistaken Identity Meaning

Definition: A time when someone wrongly believes that one person is another person.

Origin of a Case of Mistaken Identity

This idiom originated around the mid-1800s. It is unclear exactly who used it first, but it is a common collocation.

It means more or less what you would think it means. Mistake refers to a wrong assumption , and identity refers to who a person is .

Examples of a Case of Mistaken Identity

Bella: My favorite stories are stories of mistaken identities.

Hannah: Like what?

Bella: For example, The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. A prince and a pauper both live in the same city, and one is, of course, very poor, whereas the other is, of course, very rich. However, they look exactly the same. The prince longs for the freedom the pauper has, and the pauper longs for the riches of the prince. They decide to switch places, and everyone falls for it.

Hannah: Oh, yeah. Now I know what you mean. I also like stories with a case of mistaken identity.

Hanh: Hey, look! It’s Sarah!

Zhongyi: Hey Sarah!

Hanh: Hey! Hey, Sarah! Huh. I can’t believe she isn’t responding.

Zhongyi: Do you think she’s mad at us?

Hanh: Oh! I just remembered. Sarah has a twin sister. That must be Sarah’s twin we’ve been shouting at.

Zhongyi: How funny! We’ll have to tell her about this case of mistaken identity the next time we see her. The real her, I mean.

More Examples

The below excerpt is from an article about a murder victim. Police believe the murderer wanted to kill someone else and thought the victim was that person.

• Police in Pueblo have made an arrest in the September 2015 slaying of 20-year-old Isaiah Vialpando , who investigators believe was shot in the head in a case of mistaken identity. – Denver Post

The second example is about a man who was arrested as an undocumented immigrant.

• What began as an apparent case of mistaken identity soon mushroomed into a full-blown family crisis. Their dreams of opening a food truck in North Austin were dashed, and the family abandoned their home because it was now on ICE’s radar. On Monday, their girls, all U.S. citizens, were on their way to an immigrant detention facility in Pearsall, 150 miles from Austin, to see their father. – Washington Post

A case of mistaken identity describes when a person is misidentified.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Mistakenly believing in a false sense of ourselves causes problems.

Posted December 13, 2009

In Contemplative Psychotherapy , we base our work on the idea of brilliant sanity. We have glimpses of our brilliant sanity quite often, but much of the time we turn away from it.

For example, we might be enjoying a beautiful evening sky. The sun is just slipping below the horizon and there is a dazzling display of colors. Our heart feels full and tender; there may be a whiff of sadness along with a feeling of joy. If we are with someone else, we might turn to that person and have a sense of shared connection as together we appreciate the loveliness unfolding before us.

On the other hand, we might turn away from the sense of vastness, clarity, and tenderness. Perhaps we are seeing it alone, and we are all too vividly aware of wanting to have someone to share it with. Or the sense of boundless sky seems overwhelming; we feel insignificant. We begin to think about ourselves and all we have to do later. We fill our minds with thoughts and forget about the beauty in front of us.

As we saw in the last blog entry, we easily get caught up in distraction when we feel pain. This is a key idea in the "Second Noble Truth." We just as easily might redirect our attention when we have a glimpse of the limitless, clear, and heartful sense of brilliant sanity. It may seem too intense.

Buddhist psychology teaches that the main way we turn away from our direct experience, from our brilliant sanity, is by trying to maintain a mistaken sense of ourselves. This false sense of self is often referred to in Buddhist teachings as "ego" and is another aspect of the Second Noble Truth. Here "ego" refers to the attempt to hang on to an identity that is permanent, separate, and solid. It is unfortunate that the same term is often used in western psychology to refer to the ability to use logic, to be in touch with reality, or to feel confident. Those qualities are not a problem. Hanging on to a mistaken sense of identity is a problem, though.

Let's unpack this a bit. To say that we regard ourselves as somehow permanent is to say that we think that there is something in us that is unchanging. What is unchanging in us? When we look carefully, what do we find? The Buddhists would suggest that we won't find anything that actually corresponds to this thing we call our "self." I would invite you to look for yourself. Is it a thought? No, thoughts keep coming and going. A feeling? Well, those keep changing, too. A sensation in the body? Even those are changing. Look carefully, see what you find.

How about this idea of separateness? Again, we are invited to look into our own experiences. In what way are we really separate from each other and from the environment ? If I look at the lovely sunset described above, where is my experience of the sunset? Is it "out there" or is in "in here"? If I gaze at you lovingly, is my experience of "you" out there or in here? If I think about the sunset or about you, can I do so without the words of a particular language? If I spoke a different language, wouldn't I think about you differently? If you speak more than one language, you might recognize how language and culture affect your experience in a thoroughly pervasive way.

If I am sitting with a client who is sad, I may start to feel the tug of sadness in my own heart, not just in reaction to my client's sadness but by picking up on it directly. This sense of connectedness happens because, from the contemplative point of view, we are not truly separate. Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Vietnamese Zen teacher says we "inter-are." We are inter-dependent, not independent and separate. Brilliant sanity's quality of compassion or connectedness underlies this sense of connection and inter-dependence.

Finally, the idea that we have something in us that is "solid" is a belief that we could find something in ourselves that couldn't be broken down into its constituent parts. The Buddhist teachings again invite us to look and see if we can find something like that. The suggestion is that we can't find anything that can't be divided even further.

It certainly feels like there is some "me" in here. I know that's my experience. It's obvious. I exist; I'm here. I'm the one who likes chocolate ice cream and doesn't like green peppers. I'm the one who feels hurt when someone says mean things to me. I'm the one who's typing these words.

What happens, though, when I take a really good look? Can I find that "me"? Can I find something in my actual experience? Where is it? In my head? My heart? Is it always the same or does it shift and change? Is it truly independent of others? Can I really see someone in pain and stay separate, not be affected? Hmmm.

In contemplative psychotherapy training, we investigate such questions by sitting down with ourselves and observing our experience directly. We do this through the form known as " mindfulness -awareness meditation ." We will look more at how to practice meditation in a future blog entry. For now, you might want to just hold these questions in mind with curiosity and let them arise from time to time. Or you might want to sit quietly and just notice your own mind.

Suppose you conclude that you cannot find a solid, separate, permanent something or other in yourself. So what? What difference would that make?

According to the Buddhists, we spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to sustain this sense of self, ego. We are limited by how we think about ourselves. Actually, "think" is not quite the right word. Our sense of ego-identity is often more of a gut feeling. It is an assumption that we rarely question.

If we believe we are a solid, separate self, then we come up with various ways of describing ourselves to ourselves. "I'm a person who is friendly; I'm smart; I'm good-looking." Or we might have a negative sense of self that we believe in just as strongly, "I'm never going to get what I want. No one likes me." These stories support our sense of self that is familiar and predictable. Even if it's painful, we might prefer certainty to uncertainty. We prefer our known identity to not knowing. When we prefer the suffering of certainty to the open quality inherent in not knowing, we are turning away from the spaciousness quality of brilliant sanity.

Ego-identity requires constant maintenance. We have to push away any experience that contradicts our sense of ourselves. We try to hold on to the experiences that support it. We ignore the rest. It is quite exhausting. Energy that we could be using more creatively is, instead, being used to keep a false sense of ourselves going.

Not only does it use up a lot of energy, maintaining a mistaken sense of self also means restricting our lives to those things that support ego. We may become uncomfortable or afraid when we consider doing something inconsistent with our false sense of self. For example, we say, "Oh I could never do that. That wouldn't be me." The more we do that, the smaller our world becomes. We might act this way with something as minor as what we wear, but it could extend to who we could live with and how we could earn a living. It could include refraining from saying how we feel or reaching out to someone in pain.

Sometimes people think that this Buddhist idea of "egolessness" means that we don't exist at all. That's not quite right: it's that we don't exist in the way we usually think we do. Instead of being like a solid gold brick, we are more like a flowing river. We can point to the river and say, that's the Missouri River. Or the "Karen River." It keeps flowing and is never the same, even its banks move. Still, there's some sort of ever-changing continuity.

This mistaken sense of self leads to all kinds of pain. In contemplative psychotherapy we see it underlying all sorts of issues that bring people into therapy. There's also some good news: since this mistaken sense of self requires constant maintenance, it often falls apart. When that happens, the sun of brilliant sanity can be recognized, shining as it always has. We will look further into both of these ideas and their implications in therapy in future blog entries.

Karen Kissel Wegela, Ph.D. , is a professor at Naropa University and the author of The Courage to Be Present .

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• Essay on Homosexuality

Mistaken Identity By Sharon Cooper Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Homosexuality , Culture , LGBT , Family , Dating , Love , Women , Kali

Published: 11/25/2019

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Sharon Cooper’s short comic play “Mistaken Identity” follows a dinner date set up between Kali, a young, twentysomething Hindu lesbian, and Steve, a thirtysomething Baptist with very traditional views on relationships and family. When they realize the circumstances of their situation (the date will never work due to Kali’s lesbianism, which her brother, who set up the date, doesn’t know), they engage in a discussion spanning culture, race, sexuality and family. The title refers to not only the mistaken identities the two characters see in each other, but the identities their respective families attribute to them. In this essay, the various themes of the play will be explored.

The character of Kali is a stronghearted, spirited Hindu woman in her twenties who is caught between the traditional values of her people and her sexual preference towards women. As such, she is often confrontational and defensive about her sexuality, especially where men are concerned. She has experienced many cultural differences that lead to her assumption that men always want to hear the sordid details of woman-on-woman relations, believing that to be Steve’s ulterior motive. She makes her feelings on her sexuality very clear, demonstrating a strong sense of feminism – “Steve, being a lesbian is not negotiable. And don’t start with how sexy it would be to be with me or to watch me and another woman…” (p. 71).

The character of Steve is a simple, traditional, down-home Southern boy, with very old-fashioned ideas ingrained into him by his society, but he still attempts to be open-minded. “I just didn’t want you to think I was prejudiced against the French or anyone else…” (p. 67). At first, he is upset that Kali is a lesbian, but that is only because he is so desperate to feel love again. His desire to find true love and Kali’s desire to find it in spite of her family’s beliefs are a focal point that gives them a connection to work into a conversation and a friendship.

The two characters bond over many different issues, despite their cultural and social differences. Steve and Kali determine that they are both lonely people in an alienating world, just wanting to find some sort of happiness with another. Steve regales Kali with a tale of his last love, which Kali pays back with a tale of her current girlfriend. While Steve misses the affection and closeness of having a significant other, Kali laments the fact that she and her girlfriend have to speak in code over the phone in order to keep their relationship secret. Given these similar longings for true love and freedom, the characters find their own sense of camaraderie in these experiences.

In conclusion, “Mistaken Identity” is a play about similarities between people of different backgrounds, and the universal truths that bind us all together. While Steve is a straight white man, and Kali is a gay Hindu woman, they both just want to be loved, and be free to express that love. These longings for what they do not have bring them closer together, and the understanding they come to is particularly poignant, for the characters and for the reader alike.

Works Cited

Cooper, Sharon. "Mistaken Identity." Laugh lines: short comic plays. New York: Vintage Books, 2007. 53. Print.

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Some people believe that the experiences children have before they go to school will have the greatest effect on their future lives. Others argue that experiences gained when they are teenagers have a bigger influence. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

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To get an excellent score in the IELTS Task 2 writing section, one of the easiest and most effective tips is structuring your writing in the most solid format. A great argument essay structure may be divided to four paragraphs, in which comprises of four sentences (excluding the conclusion paragraph, which comprises of three sentences).

For we to consider an essay structure a great one, it should be looking like this:

• Paragraph 1 - Introduction
• Sentence 1 - Background statement
• Sentence 2 - Detailed background statement
• Sentence 3 - Thesis
• Sentence 4 - Outline sentence
• Paragraph 2 - First supporting paragraph
• Sentence 1 - Topic sentence
• Sentence 2 - Example
• Sentence 3 - Discussion
• Sentence 4 - Conclusion
• Paragraph 3 - Second supporting paragraph
• Paragraph 4 - Conclusion
• Sentence 1 - Summary
• Sentence 2 - Restatement of thesis
• Sentence 3 - Prediction or recommendation

Our recommended essay structure above comprises of fifteen (15) sentences, which will make your essay approximately 250 to 275 words.

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Some people believe that international sporting events are the ideal opportunity to show the world the qualities of the hosting nation. Others believe that these events are mainly a large unjustifiable expense. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

More people today preferred to live alone in comparison to the past do you think it is a positive or negative development give your opinion and a relevant examples to support your view, some people believe that exercise is the key to good health while others feel that having balanced diet is more important. discuss both view and give your own opinion., doctor, nurse and teachers make a great contribution to the society and should be paid more than entertainment and sports celebrities. do you agree or disagree, some people believe that the difference between the lowest paid job and the highest paid jobs should be reduced. what extent do you agree.