narrative essay on mistaken identity

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Mistaken Identity Play Analysis

Categories: Twelfth Night

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Published: Mar 13, 2024

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A Case of Mistaken Identity

Posted by Jason Smith | Dec 8, 2021 | Poetry , The Imaginative Harvest of Holly Ordway

“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God.”

-T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

I fancied myself chased by hounds of Hell, and fled.

But as I fled, I reasoned: what want of hounds has Hell?

Hell is everywhere. It needs neither quarry nor guard; they that remain

Themselves harry back from the chapel in its gates; they that escape, escape beyond Hell’s hope.

So I knew them for hounds of God, and that was worse.

It was springtide, and I fled the flooding Dao

The river’s rush-and-tumble, revel and revelation

Of headwaters. That bright current

Dooms the devout to exhaustion or else, against instinct,

To bruised, broken, bloodied surrender.

And I heard my lover’s voice, calling for me.

From love, then, I fled: love, self’s best betrayal,

Love, the undying crucifixion

Suicide’s obverse, all in its consummation

Love consumes.

But however I fled, ever closer I heard them come:

Barking dogs, swift-coursing babble, love

That knew me already by name.

I jerked, thrashed, screamed in the void where no words are,

No sound, no friction, no space

Still they closed upon me.

At the moment of utmost horror, my eyes

Opened: I sat on a bright field

With dogs playing all about me. Insensate,

I had been engaged in their happy romp

As they bounded across my lap or pushed noses under my unfeeling palms

Whether I knew or not, whether I would or no.

The sensation of their pursuit had been

A trick of my own ears, slow to hear,

And of my mind, slow to wake. I had been at bay

From the beginning.

Two books accompanied me to the car dealership that day: Holly Ordway’s Not God’s Type (the first edition, with the goldfish on the cover), which I was finishing; and C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce , which I was starting.

An acquaintance had put Ordway’s memoir literally into my hands – after overhearing me describe what I was then calling the “veiled apologetic” in my fantasy novel series Fayborn . He interrupted his own conversation at the next table to swivel his chair around and interrupt mine. “You need to meet Holly Ordway,” he said. “Apologetics and the imagination – that’s what she does!” Next week, he brought me Not God’s Type , which he traded for a promise of safe return. “It’s not in print right now,” he explained. “Irreplaceable.”

My car’s airbag was part of a recall, and I was stuck at the service center, waiting. At a wooden picnic table in the parking lot I poured through the final pages of Ordway’s story, compelled not by any mystery around what would happen but when , and how , and why . I remember pacing around the table at the conclusion, processing through energy and excitement, before picking up The Great Divorce .

It would have been my second time through The Great Divorce , but I got no farther than the Preface – arrested by a curious line in which Lewis proposes that Earth “will not be found by anyone to be a very distinct place.” Here is its context:

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot “develop” into good . . . If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in “the High Countries.” In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven. But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself. [1]

In view of Ordway’s testimony, these words struck home like lightning. I seized pad and pen and scribbled out (more or less) the poem you have just read. For it is not about Earth that we in our rebellious state are primarily mistaken, but rather, as The Great Divorce shows in example after example, we are mistaken about ourselves. The great mistake does not consist solely of conceiving of Earth as a “distinct place,” but fundamentally in conceiving of Myself as a Distinct Person. Both fantasies are scarcely true. A rebellious soul is lapsing toward nothingness, increasingly unreal, increasingly unable to recognize reality. As The Great Divorce ’s MacDonald puts it, we rebels are “Grumblers” gradually disappearing until only a “Grumble” remains. Because we are wrong about ourselves, we can’t help but be wrong about . . . everything else.

Title : Paired with the first-person narrative, “A Case of Mistaken Identity” suggests that the poem’s genre is a detective story. The poem sets up this expectation and subverts it twice. First, in detective stories the reader is accustomed to relying on the narrator for an objective view into the facts and events of the case. Here, the poem relies instead on the Untrustworthy Narrator trope to set up its turn. Second, in first-person detective stories the narrator is usually the sleuth or sleuth’s companion, solving the case or at least contributing to its resolution. Here, the narrator progressively realizes his powerlessness and awakens in the nightmarish moment just before death, only to realize that the case had long been resolved – and that he was the last to know.

Epigraph : ‘East Coker’ is particularly invoked in the 8 th stanza.

“I reasoned” : Ordway and Lewis both were greatly persuaded by reason and rational argument and engaged by believing friends to reconsider their positions on God and Christianity. “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:8)

“the chapel in its gates” : On rare occasions when I have heard preachers address Matthew 16:18, they have spoken of the Church as if it were a battering ram or some other siege weapon that the closed gates of Hell are unable to resist. This picture, I think, confuses the grammar of Christ’s statement (of the two nouns, Hell’s gates is the thing acting, not the Church) and confuses the sequence of events (Christ’s harrowing of Hell occurs before the Church is founded; see Eph. 4:8-10, 1 Pet. 4:6). Here the poem implies a more Lewisian image: though Christ has already opened the gates of Hell, the self-damned keep on trying to close them again; a chapel, placed as a doorstop to prevent the gates from closing, creates the egress through which the penitent can freely escape. [2]

“Hell’s hope” : “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. / What matter where, if I be still the same . . . / Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n” ( Paradise Lost , Book I, emphasis added ).

“hounds of God” : This poem’s central image is indebted to Francis Thompson’s 1893 poem “The Hound of Heaven.”

“that was worse” : The narrator would rather be caught by Hell-hounds than by God, baldly revealing his perspective. “Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat . . . I had always wanted, above all things, not to be ‘interfered with.’ I had wanted (mad wish) ‘to call my soul my own.’” [3]

Dao : This word (formerly more often anglicized as Tao ) and the experiences and argument of this stanza will be familiar to readers of The Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity Book 1: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” See also Romans 7: “If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.”

“obverse” : This word implies that the untrustworthy narrator sees love and suicide as two sides of the same coin. He gets that love consists of self-sacrifice or self-denial for the beloved’s sake… and has no interest in taking part.

“however I fled” : c.f. Psalm 139.

“babble” : Words like this reinforce the narrator’s incapacity to truly understand what is pursuing him and what he is being offered.

“in the void” : A calculated retreat from God is, ultimately, a retreat into Nothingness and inagency. Without realizing or acknowledging it, the self-damned will the loss of their will – and eventually, according to The Great Divorce and The Problem of Pain , they get what they want.

“engaged in their happy romp” : That God pursues us for our own good, for in fact the only real and lasting good we can possibly experience, is incomprehensible foolishness to the soul in rebellion and astonishing to the rebel soul when finally glimpsed. This is the truth one must first believe in order to see. “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8) There is no greater proof of God’s greatness than his glory and stature being undiminished, even magnified, by his undignified and delighted pursuit of a stubborn and rebellious people.

“at bay / From the beginning” : Surrendering to God feels like the loss of everything when we finally face that choice. But then, looking back from the other side, we see clearly that we had nothing, and so lost nothing. Choosing not to lay down arms (what arms?) is futile, if God were not meek. A soul that continues in rebellion is a babe in its mother’s womb, demanding not to be born. Yet if we consent to our fingers being pried from the nothingness to which we cling, we begin, and continue into joy.

Citation Information

Jason M. Smith, “A Case of Mistaken Identity” An Unexpected Journal: The Imaginative Harvest of Holly Ordway 4, no. 4. (Advent 2021), 189-200.

Direct Link: https://anunexpectedjournal.com///a-case-of-mistaken-identity/

[widgets_on_pages id=”Ordway Photos”]

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperOne, 2001), viii-ix.

[2] Compare Lewis’s speculations about Hell and its willing occupants in The Great Divorce , The Problem of Pain , and Mere Christianity .

[3] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Mariner Books, 2012), 227-8.

About The Author

Jason Smith

Jason M. Smith is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and of the Cultural Apologetics M.A. program at Houston Christian University. An avid gardener since early childhood, Smith first became interested in Christian conservationism after reading The Lord of the Rings during primary school, and has been active in the field ever since. Smith formerly operated a residential landscape design & installation company specializing in native plants and low-resource gardens. In 1999 he was certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Steward of suburban wildlife habitat in backyards, small business landscapes, and communities, and subsequently served two years as a Grounds Committee consultant for the township of South Riding, Virginia. He can be reached at [email protected].

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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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Comedy Element in Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew"

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Essay on a case of mistaken identity

EF_Team2 1 / 1704 Feb 16, 2008 #2 Greetings! I love how your "essays" turn into fascinating little slices of life! This is very good writing. :-) I'd be happy to give you some pointers: Eddie was chasing after his ball [1]. - I actually rather liked the simplicity of this sentence. However, if you really feel it needs more, you could add something like "Eddie was chasing after his ball, sand pluming up behind his little feet as he ran along the dunes." A boy picked up the ball after it hit his ankle, and started playing with the ball [2]. - I might rewrite this and the surrounding sentences this way: This time Eddie could not reach the ball, and it rolled down the strip of dry sand until it bumped against the ankles of a young boy. The boy picked up the ball and started bouncing it off the tops of his thighs, first one leg and then the other. When my brother came up to him to ask for his ball back, the boy stopped playing, kept the ball curled protectively in one arm, and reached out with his other arm to shove Eddie. I'd keep "Eddie fell on the sand" as is; I like the way you use shorter sentences to vary the cadence of your writing. :-) He kicked it hard and then ran fast to meet it along its way, using his small foot to stop it and direct it back to the sand castle like a professional soccer player. They walked away, leaving me and Eddie rooted to the spot. You can play with it, you know.' I think your dialogue is good. Many beginning writers have a tendency to overexplain their characters' motivations, rather than letting the dialogue speak for itself. For instance, I would cut out the part here that I've put in brackets: 'Look,' I tried to suppress the inner surge of impatience that was burning me [to talk to the boy again, ] Watch for description that is physically impossible: "She planted one arm on her hips firmly" - How did she get one arm on both hips? ;-)) Try not to repeat words within a sentence; look for substitutions, as I used here: Eddie released my hand, the traces of his nails imprinted on my palm . Punctuation in dialogue can be tricky: 'Your parents should have taught you two some basic courtesy before letting you go out stealing things from people!' The woman turned to her son. 'Let's go, honey. The beach is full of such people.' For greater impact, you might want to consider changing the ending slightly: "My vision blurred as the tide swept it out to sea." It's often best to let the reader "fill in the blanks" rather than explaining too much; let the tears be implied. Although I have given you a number of suggestions, I want to emphasize that your writing is very, very good! I look forward to reading more! Thanks, Sarah, EssayForum.com

OP learningtowrite 32 / 50 Feb 16, 2008 #3 Do you think that I could cut it down to 600 words without changing major parts? This essay exceeds the range by nearly 400 words :(. And do you think my type of writing is not very suitable for personal recount? It sounds a bit like a story as you said... And do you think that I follow the instruction? Because I was worried that maybe the part on "furious argument" is not furious enough:D Thank you for helping me along all this time. It sounds much better after being edited :]

EF_Team2 1 / 1704 Feb 17, 2008 #4 Greetings! I have a theory that pretty much anything can be edited down if you are willing to be ruthless enough! :-)) I see nothing wrong with a personal recount sounding like a short story; it makes it more interesting, as far as I'm concerned. And I think glaring, shouting, blood boiling and a vein pulsing in the temple sounds like a very furious argument! Try not to second-guess yourself too much; you really are a very talented writer--you just need a little more practice and some extra self-confidence, both of which are obtainable! :-) Give the editing a try and see how much you can cut. You might want to start with the dialogue, particularly your lines; it's not that they're not good, just that they are the most expendable portion, as far as the story line. Let me know how it goes! Thanks, Sarah, EssayForum.com

OP learningtowrite 32 / 50 Feb 17, 2008 #5 The sun was shining brightly on the golden curve of the beach. It was such a beautiful day to stay outdoors. Stretching on the collapsible chair under the cool shade of the parasol, I idled my peaceful time away. Through the lens of my sunglasses, my brother's blue trunks turned charcoal gray. Sand plumped behind his little feet as he chased his ball along the dunes. The way he passed his ball and stopped it along its path was fascinating, like a professional soccer player. You can never take the ball away from Eddie. It was his life. My gaze followed the path of the ball along the beach. This time Eddie could not reach the ball; it rolled down the strip of dry sand until it bumped against the ankles of a young boy. The boy picked up the ball and started bouncing it off the tops of his thighs, first one leg and then the other. When my brother came up to him to ask for his ball back, the boy stopped playing, kept the ball curled protectively in one arm, the other reached out to shove Eddie. He fell on the sand. From afar, I could hear them quarrelling. When my brother heard me shout to him, he ran to me, grasped my hand and told me everything, his tremulous voice faded under the loud cheering on the beach. That boy refused to return Eddie's ball. He stared at us as we approached him. 'The ball is mine.' The boy hissed through his teeth. 'Five minutes ago, I left this ball on the beach, and it disappeared. Maybe your brother...' 'I did not steal it!' Eddie cut in, breathing in short pants, glaring at the boy. I shook his hand and rubbed his back, trying to calm him down. 'Look,' it was hard to suppress the inner surge of impatience within me, 'Eddie wouldn't steal anything. Now, can you play together for a while? Eddie?' I looked down, begging him. My brother, though reluctantly, nodded. 'Why do I have to play with a liar? He stole my ball!' His cruel words lingered in the hot, stuffy air. Suddenly, Eddie reached out his arm, trying to snatch the ball back, but not fast enough. The boy stepped back, hid the ball behind his back and shouted for his mother. The sun was like a shimmering metal plate against my bare foot. I felt my blood boiling. A woman of substantial build in a skimpy swimming-suit waddled towards us. After she listened to his side of story, I was about to explain everything to her, hoping that she would help make peace between the boys, but my hope died out when I saw her glaring at us. Planted one arm firmly on her hip, she raised her voice. 'So, your brother stole my son's ball.' 'I DID NOT steal it. It is mine.' My brother shouted, veins pulsing in his temples. 'Madam', my patience was draining out, 'it is my brother's ball. I'm sure your son's ball is just somewhere around...' '... and picked up by your brother.' She smirked. 'Madam, my brother did not steal anything, nor did he lie to you'. Anger rose within me, flamelike. Eddie tensed. 'Oh, enough! You should be grateful that I won't bring you liars to the police. ' The woman turned to her son, 'Let's go, honey.' They took off, leaving me and Eddie rooted to the spot. After a while, Eddie released my hand, the traces of his nail imprinted on my palm. We went back to the sand dunes, Eddie in front of me, his eyes glued to the gritty sand. Every now and then, a sigh broke the silence between us. Suddenly, a red ball lying on the beach caught my eyes. I took it to show Eddie; it was exactly identical to his. When I told him to play with it, he turned to me, his eyes red-rimmed, his mind drifting somewhere else. 'Just throw it away. I don't feel like playing anymore.' And he walked away, leaving me stunned for a few seconds. The beautiful castle we built was now no more than a handful of wet sand, wounded. My vision blurred as tide swept it out to the sea. I rewrote part of it, mostly the dialogue. Cutting away any words is painful:P. But guess what, it is only over 700 words now!!! Hurray!!!!!!!!! Thank you for your advice!

EF_Team2 1 / 1704 Feb 17, 2008 #6 Greetings! This is great! You did a great job of trimming it down! (This painful process of editing out words you have so lovingly crafted has been referred to as "murdering your children"; I suspect you can see why!) Here are just a few more suggestions: You could never take the ball away from Eddie. It was his life. - You want to make sure your tenses match. When my brother came up to him to ask for his ball back, the boy stopped playing, kept the ball curled protectively in one arm, the other reached out to shove Eddie. He fell on the sand. - The first sentence is a run-on. Better would be "When my brother came up to him to ask for his ball back, the boy stopped playing, kept the ball curled protectively in one arm, and with the other, reached out to shove Eddie. He fell on the sand." You also want to make clear that when the boy and his mother walk away, they have the ball with them. Perhaps, "They took off with the ball." Great job! Thanks, Sarah, EssayForum.com

OP learningtowrite 32 / 50 Feb 18, 2008 #7 Yeah, thanks. Just last night, I realised that this essay is supposed to be about mistaken identity, which means that I went the wrong way, totally. Anyway, I shall try to work on another one asap, cos it's due tmr:D My teacher laughed so much when she heard about it, you know. It is really funny:D

EF_Team2 1 / 1704 Feb 18, 2008 #8 :-)) Well, hang on to it, because it's too good to toss out! ;-) Sarah

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3 Great Narrative Essay Examples + Tips for Writing

General Education

A narrative essay is one of the most intimidating assignments you can be handed at any level of your education. Where you've previously written argumentative essays that make a point or analytic essays that dissect meaning, a narrative essay asks you to write what is effectively a story .

But unlike a simple work of creative fiction, your narrative essay must have a clear and concrete motif —a recurring theme or idea that you’ll explore throughout. Narrative essays are less rigid, more creative in expression, and therefore pretty different from most other essays you’ll be writing.

But not to fear—in this article, we’ll be covering what a narrative essay is, how to write a good one, and also analyzing some personal narrative essay examples to show you what a great one looks like.

What Is a Narrative Essay?

At first glance, a narrative essay might sound like you’re just writing a story. Like the stories you're used to reading, a narrative essay is generally (but not always) chronological, following a clear throughline from beginning to end. Even if the story jumps around in time, all the details will come back to one specific theme, demonstrated through your choice in motifs.

Unlike many creative stories, however, your narrative essay should be based in fact. That doesn’t mean that every detail needs to be pure and untainted by imagination, but rather that you shouldn’t wholly invent the events of your narrative essay. There’s nothing wrong with inventing a person’s words if you can’t remember them exactly, but you shouldn’t say they said something they weren’t even close to saying.

Another big difference between narrative essays and creative fiction—as well as other kinds of essays—is that narrative essays are based on motifs. A motif is a dominant idea or theme, one that you establish before writing the essay. As you’re crafting the narrative, it’ll feed back into your motif to create a comprehensive picture of whatever that motif is.

For example, say you want to write a narrative essay about how your first day in high school helped you establish your identity. You might discuss events like trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, having to describe yourself in five words as an icebreaker in your math class, or being unsure what to do during your lunch break because it’s no longer acceptable to go outside and play during lunch. All of those ideas feed back into the central motif of establishing your identity.

The important thing to remember is that while a narrative essay is typically told chronologically and intended to read like a story, it is not purely for entertainment value. A narrative essay delivers its theme by deliberately weaving the motifs through the events, scenes, and details. While a narrative essay may be entertaining, its primary purpose is to tell a complete story based on a central meaning.

Unlike other essay forms, it is totally okay—even expected—to use first-person narration in narrative essays. If you’re writing a story about yourself, it’s natural to refer to yourself within the essay. It’s also okay to use other perspectives, such as third- or even second-person, but that should only be done if it better serves your motif. Generally speaking, your narrative essay should be in first-person perspective.

Though your motif choices may feel at times like you’re making a point the way you would in an argumentative essay, a narrative essay’s goal is to tell a story, not convince the reader of anything. Your reader should be able to tell what your motif is from reading, but you don’t have to change their mind about anything. If they don’t understand the point you are making, you should consider strengthening the delivery of the events and descriptions that support your motif.

Narrative essays also share some features with analytical essays, in which you derive meaning from a book, film, or other media. But narrative essays work differently—you’re not trying to draw meaning from an existing text, but rather using an event you’ve experienced to convey meaning. In an analytical essay, you examine narrative, whereas in a narrative essay you create narrative.

The structure of a narrative essay is also a bit different than other essays. You’ll generally be getting your point across chronologically as opposed to grouping together specific arguments in paragraphs or sections. To return to the example of an essay discussing your first day of high school and how it impacted the shaping of your identity, it would be weird to put the events out of order, even if not knowing what to do after lunch feels like a stronger idea than choosing where to sit. Instead of organizing to deliver your information based on maximum impact, you’ll be telling your story as it happened, using concrete details to reinforce your theme.

3 Great Narrative Essay Examples

One of the best ways to learn how to write a narrative essay is to look at a great narrative essay sample. Let’s take a look at some truly stellar narrative essay examples and dive into what exactly makes them work so well.

A Ticket to the Fair by David Foster Wallace

Today is Press Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, and I’m supposed to be at the fairgrounds by 9:00 A.M. to get my credentials. I imagine credentials to be a small white card in the band of a fedora. I’ve never been considered press before. My real interest in credentials is getting into rides and shows for free. I’m fresh in from the East Coast, for an East Coast magazine. Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish. I think they asked me to do this because I grew up here, just a couple hours’ drive from downstate Springfield. I never did go to the state fair, though—I pretty much topped out at the county fair level. Actually, I haven’t been back to Illinois for a long time, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Throughout this essay, David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as press at the Illinois State Fair. But it’s clear from this opening that he’s not just reporting on the events exactly as they happened—though that’s also true— but rather making a point about how the East Coast, where he lives and works, thinks about the Midwest.

In his opening paragraph, Wallace states that outright: “Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish.”

Not every motif needs to be stated this clearly , but in an essay as long as Wallace’s, particularly since the audience for such a piece may feel similarly and forget that such a large portion of the country exists, it’s important to make that point clear.

But Wallace doesn’t just rest on introducing his motif and telling the events exactly as they occurred from there. It’s clear that he selects events that remind us of that idea of East Coast cynicism , such as when he realizes that the Help Me Grow tent is standing on top of fake grass that is killing the real grass beneath, when he realizes the hypocrisy of craving a corn dog when faced with a real, suffering pig, when he’s upset for his friend even though he’s not the one being sexually harassed, and when he witnesses another East Coast person doing something he wouldn’t dare to do.

Wallace is literally telling the audience exactly what happened, complete with dates and timestamps for when each event occurred. But he’s also choosing those events with a purpose—he doesn’t focus on details that don’t serve his motif. That’s why he discusses the experiences of people, how the smells are unappealing to him, and how all the people he meets, in cowboy hats, overalls, or “black spandex that looks like cheesecake leotards,” feel almost alien to him.

All of these details feed back into the throughline of East Coast thinking that Wallace introduces in the first paragraph. He also refers back to it in the essay’s final paragraph, stating:

At last, an overarching theory blooms inside my head: megalopolitan East Coasters’ summer treats and breaks and literally ‘getaways,’ flights-from—from crowds, noise, heat, dirt, the stress of too many sensory choices….The East Coast existential treat is escape from confines and stimuli—quiet, rustic vistas that hold still, turn inward, turn away. Not so in the rural Midwest. Here you’re pretty much away all the time….Something in a Midwesterner sort of actuates , deep down, at a public event….The real spectacle that draws us here is us.

Throughout this journey, Wallace has tried to demonstrate how the East Coast thinks about the Midwest, ultimately concluding that they are captivated by the Midwest’s less stimuli-filled life, but that the real reason they are interested in events like the Illinois State Fair is that they are, in some ways, a means of looking at the East Coast in a new, estranging way.

The reason this works so well is that Wallace has carefully chosen his examples, outlined his motif and themes in the first paragraph, and eventually circled back to the original motif with a clearer understanding of his original point.

When outlining your own narrative essay, try to do the same. Start with a theme, build upon it with examples, and return to it in the end with an even deeper understanding of the original issue. You don’t need this much space to explore a theme, either—as we’ll see in the next example, a strong narrative essay can also be very short.

Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

In this essay, Virginia Woolf explains her encounter with a dying moth. On surface level, this essay is just a recounting of an afternoon in which she watched a moth die—it’s even established in the title. But there’s more to it than that. Though Woolf does not begin her essay with as clear a motif as Wallace, it’s not hard to pick out the evidence she uses to support her point, which is that the experience of this moth is also the human experience.

In the title, Woolf tells us this essay is about death. But in the first paragraph, she seems to mostly be discussing life—the moth is “content with life,” people are working in the fields, and birds are flying. However, she mentions that it is mid-September and that the fields were being plowed. It’s autumn and it’s time for the harvest; the time of year in which many things die.

In this short essay, she chronicles the experience of watching a moth seemingly embody life, then die. Though this essay is literally about a moth, it’s also about a whole lot more than that. After all, moths aren’t the only things that die—Woolf is also reflecting on her own mortality, as well as the mortality of everything around her.

At its core, the essay discusses the push and pull of life and death, not in a way that’s necessarily sad, but in a way that is accepting of both. Woolf begins by setting up the transitional fall season, often associated with things coming to an end, and raises the ideas of pleasure, vitality, and pity.

At one point, Woolf tries to help the dying moth, but reconsiders, as it would interfere with the natural order of the world. The moth’s death is part of the natural order of the world, just like fall, just like her own eventual death.

All these themes are set up in the beginning and explored throughout the essay’s narrative. Though Woolf doesn’t directly state her theme, she reinforces it by choosing a small, isolated event—watching a moth die—and illustrating her point through details.

With this essay, we can see that you don’t need a big, weird, exciting event to discuss an important meaning. Woolf is able to explore complicated ideas in a short essay by being deliberate about what details she includes, just as you can be in your own essays.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.

Like Woolf, Baldwin does not lay out his themes in concrete terms—unlike Wallace, there’s no clear sentence that explains what he’ll be talking about. However, you can see the motifs quite clearly: death, fatherhood, struggle, and race.

Throughout the narrative essay, Baldwin discusses the circumstances of his father’s death, including his complicated relationship with his father. By introducing those motifs in the first paragraph, the reader understands that everything discussed in the essay will come back to those core ideas. When Baldwin talks about his experience with a white teacher taking an interest in him and his father’s resistance to that, he is also talking about race and his father’s death. When he talks about his father’s death, he is also talking about his views on race. When he talks about his encounters with segregation and racism, he is talking, in part, about his father.

Because his father was a hard, uncompromising man, Baldwin struggles to reconcile the knowledge that his father was right about many things with his desire to not let that hardness consume him, as well.

Baldwin doesn’t explicitly state any of this, but his writing so often touches on the same motifs that it becomes clear he wants us to think about all these ideas in conversation with one another.

At the end of the essay, Baldwin makes it more clear:

This fight begins, however, in the heart and it had now been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

Here, Baldwin ties together the themes and motifs into one clear statement: that he must continue to fight and recognize injustice, especially racial injustice, just as his father did. But unlike his father, he must do it beginning with himself—he must not let himself be closed off to the world as his father was. And yet, he still wishes he had his father for guidance, even as he establishes that he hopes to be a different man than his father.

In this essay, Baldwin loads the front of the essay with his motifs, and, through his narrative, weaves them together into a theme. In the end, he comes to a conclusion that connects all of those things together and leaves the reader with a lasting impression of completion—though the elements may have been initially disparate, in the end everything makes sense.

You can replicate this tactic of introducing seemingly unattached ideas and weaving them together in your own essays. By introducing those motifs, developing them throughout, and bringing them together in the end, you can demonstrate to your reader how all of them are related. However, it’s especially important to be sure that your motifs and clear and consistent throughout your essay so that the conclusion feels earned and consistent—if not, readers may feel mislead.

5 Key Tips for Writing Narrative Essays

Narrative essays can be a lot of fun to write since they’re so heavily based on creativity. But that can also feel intimidating—sometimes it’s easier to have strict guidelines than to have to make it all up yourself. Here are a few tips to keep your narrative essay feeling strong and fresh.

Develop Strong Motifs

Motifs are the foundation of a narrative essay . What are you trying to say? How can you say that using specific symbols or events? Those are your motifs.

In the same way that an argumentative essay’s body should support its thesis, the body of your narrative essay should include motifs that support your theme.

Try to avoid cliches, as these will feel tired to your readers. Instead of roses to symbolize love, try succulents. Instead of the ocean representing some vast, unknowable truth, try the depths of your brother’s bedroom. Keep your language and motifs fresh and your essay will be even stronger!

Use First-Person Perspective

In many essays, you’re expected to remove yourself so that your points stand on their own. Not so in a narrative essay—in this case, you want to make use of your own perspective.

Sometimes a different perspective can make your point even stronger. If you want someone to identify with your point of view, it may be tempting to choose a second-person perspective. However, be sure you really understand the function of second-person; it’s very easy to put a reader off if the narration isn’t expertly deployed.

If you want a little bit of distance, third-person perspective may be okay. But be careful—too much distance and your reader may feel like the narrative lacks truth.

That’s why first-person perspective is the standard. It keeps you, the writer, close to the narrative, reminding the reader that it really happened. And because you really know what happened and how, you’re free to inject your own opinion into the story without it detracting from your point, as it would in a different type of essay.

Stick to the Truth

Your essay should be true. However, this is a creative essay, and it’s okay to embellish a little. Rarely in life do we experience anything with a clear, concrete meaning the way somebody in a book might. If you flub the details a little, it’s okay—just don’t make them up entirely.

Also, nobody expects you to perfectly recall details that may have happened years ago. You may have to reconstruct dialog from your memory and your imagination. That’s okay, again, as long as you aren’t making it up entirely and assigning made-up statements to somebody.

Dialog is a powerful tool. A good conversation can add flavor and interest to a story, as we saw demonstrated in David Foster Wallace’s essay. As previously mentioned, it’s okay to flub it a little, especially because you’re likely writing about an experience you had without knowing that you’d be writing about it later.

However, don’t rely too much on it. Your narrative essay shouldn’t be told through people explaining things to one another; the motif comes through in the details. Dialog can be one of those details, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Use Sensory Descriptions

Because a narrative essay is a story, you can use sensory details to make your writing more interesting. If you’re describing a particular experience, you can go into detail about things like taste, smell, and hearing in a way that you probably wouldn’t do in any other essay style.

These details can tie into your overall motifs and further your point. Woolf describes in great detail what she sees while watching the moth, giving us the sense that we, too, are watching the moth. In Wallace’s essay, he discusses the sights, sounds, and smells of the Illinois State Fair to help emphasize his point about its strangeness. And in Baldwin’s essay, he describes shattered glass as a “wilderness,” and uses the feelings of his body to describe his mental state.

All these descriptions anchor us not only in the story, but in the motifs and themes as well. One of the tools of a writer is making the reader feel as you felt, and sensory details help you achieve that.

What’s Next?

Looking to brush up on your essay-writing capabilities before the ACT? This guide to ACT English will walk you through some of the best strategies and practice questions to get you prepared!

Part of practicing for the ACT is ensuring your word choice and diction are on point. Check out this guide to some of the most common errors on the ACT English section to be sure that you're not making these common mistakes!

A solid understanding of English principles will help you make an effective point in a narrative essay, and you can get that understanding through taking a rigorous assortment of high school English classes !

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Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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> The Cambridge Handbook of Identity
> Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity: From Ego to Life Narrative

Book contents

The Cambridge Handbook of Identity
Copyright page
Contributors
1 Identity: With or Without You?
Part I The Origin and Development of the Concept of Identity
Part II New Perspectives and Challenges
5 A Moral Perspective: Identity as Self-Interpretation
6 Researching Identities as Affective Discursive Practices
7 The Negotiation of Continuity and Change of Mapuche Women Weavers in Chile and Its Implications for (Non-Eurocentric) Identity Research
8 Identity and Voices: A Language-Dialogical Take
9 Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity: From Ego to Life Narrative
10 Erikson, the Identity Statuses, and Beyond
Part III Methodological Approaches
Part IV Current Domains
Part V Where Is Identity?
Author Index
Subject Index

9 - Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity: From Ego to Life Narrative

from Part II - New Perspectives and Challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2021

In psychology, the concept of identity goes back to the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. However, in psychoanalysis the concept does not play a central role. Therefore, we provide a historical review of the implicit contributions of psychoanalysis to the concept in four steps, using Erikson’s work as the central reference point and suggesting a narrative and co-narrative conception of identity that acknowledges the interpersonal and social process character of identity based on a realist epistemological position. We review psychoanalytic contributions leading up to Erikson, especially that of his teacher Federn. We summarize Erikson’s concept of ego-identity, which served to extend a view of development driven by biological maturation and identifications to include sociocultural influences in adolescence and beyond. We identify six essential aspects of identity in his work and highlight his stress on adolescence as the cradle of identity and the life story. Object relations theory implicitly contributed to a view of identity springing from a matrix of others-with-self, but only Kernberg took up the concept of identity in a clinically relevant way. Later authors like Ogden and Ferro implicitly radicalized the interpersonal nature of identity by exclusively focusing on its moment-to-moment shifts in interaction. Finally, we argue for a narrative conception of identity, bending back to Erikson’s conception of identity as a life story that reaches beyond the couch, presenting an updated concept of narrative identity which is enriched by psychoanalytic developments of the past fifty years.

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Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity: From Ego to Life Narrative
By Tilmann Habermas , Nina Kemper
Edited by Michael Bamberg , Clark University, Massachusetts , Carolin Demuth , Aalborg University, Denmark , Meike Watzlawik
Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Identity
Online publication: 29 October 2021
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108755146.011

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How to write a narrative essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

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What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

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Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

Write a story about your first day of school.
Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

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If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/narrative-essay/

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Friday, May 17, 2013

Mistaken identity - a narrative essay, 2 comments:.

Thank you so much

DOI: 10.1075/JNLH.3.2-3.03MIS
Corpus ID: 146851021

Mistaken Identities: First-Person Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro

Margaret C. Scanlan
Published 1993
Journal of Narrative and Life History

5 Citations

Identity, identification and narcissistic phantasy in the novels of kazuo ishiguro, um tigre na sala: uma leitura de os vestígios do dia.

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A Case of Mistaken Identity

Published by nidhi in category Social and Moral with tag kidnap | money

Social Short Story – A Case of Mistaken Identity

Social Short Story – A Case of Mistaken Identity Photo credit: clarita from morguefile.com

I tried to focus on the face that was obscured by the bright lights burning behind her. A dark shadow twitching nervously. I could make out the outline of her overcoat – a heavy suede brown coloured outfit. The hood of the coat covered the sides of her face. It was clasped tightly around her waist and fell below her knees, drowning her in its layers.

She clasped and unclasped her hands and coughed, in an effort to clear the imaginary phlegm. Then her shadowed face looked towards me. I could discern her large brown eyes, blinking rapidly, peering through the edges of the hood, her lips quivering with every motion that she unconsciously made. Clearly she wanted to say something, but was unsure about how to do it.

I didn’t care. The throbbing dull metallic sound was back in my ears. The doctor had called it a mild case of tinnitus. Mild. My ass. Clearly the doctor had never been victimized by this tinnitus; else he wouldn’t have casually labelled it so and sent me home with a pain reliever which I strongly suspect was a placebo. And this tinnitus was clearly indicating its presence now. The bottle of alcohol that I had downed an hour ago also provided no respite. Things are groggy, sure, but I can still feel the pain and the noise that is building up in my eardrums.

“Are you all right?” a soft, barely there voice queried.

I grunted. I didn’t mean to be rude. Even though I may not be convent educated, I know my manners. I couldn’t speak due to the throbbing pain that had started growing roots in my brain.

And the lights! They were killing me. I groaned and closed my eyes, fumbling my way to the switch.

There! Much better now with the lights switched off.

I always liked the dark. Maybe it has something to do with the circumstances that followed after I was born. They say my mother after having given birth had then tied a blanket around my tiny body, my head and my nose. Then she pushed this bundle underneath a berth in a train, behind the luggage. For six hours, I went unnoticed. My mother had slipped away at the earliest opportunity. I owe my life not to her, but to the rats, that had discovered me and had started nibbling my toes and ears, when soon their squeaky noises drew the curiosity of a young urchin who retrieved me from behind.

I couldn’t see the girl anymore. But I could smell her – Chanel. I had once worked in the perfume department of one of the fancy stores that is there in the downtown area. Even though I worked there only for a few weeks before being kicked out for suspected foul play, I know my perfumes.

Chanel – Mademoiselle. That’s what this spoilt rich kid was wearing. Since when did twelve year olds start putting Chanel? In my opinion, if you ask me, these new age parents are spoiling their kids. Not that I cared. The only thing I cared was money. And a twelve year old who wears Chanel is the brand ambassador of money. I had already placed a telephonic call, right after I had abducted her in front of the dance school.

It was raining cats and dogs and she stood huddled in her overcoat, trying to protect herself from the downpour, shrinking within the comforts of the layers that the coat had to offer. But although it protected her from the rain, it was not enough to protect her from me. Standing beside her BMW, looking around nervously, she was caught unaware as I pulled her into the car and drove her all the way to the outskirts of the city before dumping her in this abandoned bungalow which is serving as my temporary hideout.

I gave the distraught parents forty eight hours before their precious princess would be gone forever if they didn’t cough up the money or if they tried to involve the police. Needless reminders, but important nonetheless. It was a huge sum, based on my previous heists. And it brought a smile to my lips that quickly metamorphosed into excruciating pain. Damn that tinnitus. I grimaced, exhaling slowly.

“They will not pay you” said a docile voice piercing through the darkness, stabbing suddenly at my thoughts, my dreams.

“They will not pay…” There she goes again. Stabbing mercilessly.

A sudden convulsion shook my body, the fire blazing in my bloodshot eyes, I glared in the direction the voice had come from.

“Shutup” – I said, gathering up all the meanness I could in my voice, hoping to quell any rebellious thoughts in her head and any doubts in mine.

Silence ensued for five minutes, in which I could hear her fidgeting in the dark, her coat causing a muffled sound. I could hear the small scared breaths. But this power gave me no comfort. Along with the pulsating pain a new kind of dread had started making its presence in my head.

“it’s true” , she said

I kept quiet. I didn’t like the conviction that the voice carried. I forgot about the pain, my mind as if controlled remotely by that voice started dwelling on the negative.

“It’s a case of mistaken identity. Jen has a secret boyfriend whom she visits from time to time and while she does that I become her”

I held my breath, my heart was constricting in an unaccustomed manner.

“Yesterday, we both left for the dance class, swapped our overcoats and she departed to meet her boyfriend, which is the usual routine, while I stayed back till the class finished. That is when you kidnapped me as I waited at the gate for her to return… ”

I felt my body go numb, my eyes closed on their own, I clenched my fist and a loud roar escaped my mouth.

“Nooooooo” I screamed and banged my fist against the floor. I heard her retreat further into the corner.

“I am just the driver’s daughter…don’t kill me please”, the words came intermittently through the sobs.

I got up, disoriented from the pain, the booze but more so from the girl’s narrative. I stumbled towards the door, opened the lock with the key, turned, looked in her direction and threw some money on the floor.

“Go home”, I said as I walked away with a nagging guilt, merging into the darkness that was engulfing the city.

Morning found me at the railway station, sprawled on a bench. Wincing, I opened my eyes, my mind increasingly aware of pain from parts of the body that I had no idea existed. The tinnitus had thankfully subsided and was just a dull pulsating entity somewhere in the back. Gloomily, I got up and walked towards the tea stall to get my daily dosage of morning beverage, the one that I could afford.

I sipped my tea, slowly, savoring every bit of it for I was not sure when the next one would come by. I scanned the crowd on the platform, looking for an easy target for picking up a pocket or two, when my eyes were drawn to the newspaper article that stared at me.

I walked towards the man holding the paper, standing adjacent to him I craned my neck slightly.

“Kidnapping foiled by Smart Teen”

I swallowed. I could feel the hammering in my head return.

The kidnapped girl feigned a case of mistaken identity, a confusion borne out of swapped overcoats and taking advantage of the kidnapper who was clearly a novice and suffering from some kind of disease, the smart teen had been able to walk away home, unscathed, using the money given by the kidnapper himself!

I stared at the lines till they blurred because of the tears that formed in my eyes because of the boiling rage within. I started jumping, screaming, and scaring the other people away, till I saw from the corner of the eye a policeman move in my direction brandishing his stick at me. I fled away in anger and shame, cursing the smart girl for leaving me with a memory of a day that would forever continue to mock me my whole life.

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🌷 Mistaken identity narrative essay. Personal Narrative: Mistaken Identity. 2022-10-19

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Shakespeare Mistaken Identity: [Essay Example], 498 words
Get original essay. Shakespeare's use of mistaken identity serves as a vehicle for exploring the fluidity and fragility of human identity. One of the most iconic examples of this is found in the play "Twelfth Night," where the character Viola disguises herself as a man named Cesario. This case of mistaken identity leads to a series of comedic ...
Personal Narrative : Mistaken Identity
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Mistaken Identity Play Analysis: [Essay Example], 462 words
The theme of mistaken identity in "Twelfth Night" is introduced right at the beginning of the play when Viola, after surviving a shipwreck, decides to disguise herself as a man named Cesario. This sets the stage for a series of misunderstandings and comedic situations, as Viola/Cesario becomes embroiled in a love triangle with the Duke Orsino ...
A Case of Mistaken Identity
Barking dogs, swift-coursing babble, love. That knew me already by name. I jerked, thrashed, screamed in the void where no words are, No sound, no friction, no space. Still they closed upon me. At the moment of utmost horror, my eyes. Opened: I sat on a bright field. With dogs playing all about me.
Mistaken Identity
Paper Type: 800 Word Essay Examples. A discussion of mistaken identity in William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew".Throughout the play "The Taming of the Shrew," William Shakespeare has utilized several ingenious techniques resulting in an effective piece of work. One of the more unique and creative methods is the use of mistaken identity.
Shakespeare and Mistaken Identity Struggles
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.
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This week, share a case of mistaken identity. Plot twist story prompts aren't meant for the beginning or the end of stories. Rather, they're for forcing big and small turns in the anticipated trajectory of a story. This is to make it more interesting for the readers and writers alike. Each week, I'll provide a new prompt to help twist your story.
Mistaken Identity Essay
Mistaken Identity Essay. The conflict in Mistaken Identity is Individual versus society. Kali, informs Steve that she is a lesbian and her brother does not know. Kali's culture does not condone lesbianism, that would mean exile for her, and she must be careful who she trust. However, Steve is willing to marry Kali, despite her sexual preference.
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A discussion of mistaken identity in William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". Throughout the play "The Taming of the Shrew," William Shakespeare has utilized several ingenious techniques resulting in an effective piece of work. One of the more unique and creative methods is the use of mistaken identity.
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Feb 16, 2008 #1. Title: Write about an occasion when a furious argument took place based on a case of mistaken identity. The sun was shining brightly on the golden curve of the beach. It was such a beautiful day to stay outdoors. Stretching on the collapsible chair under the cool shade of the parasol, I idled my peaceful time away.
Personal Narrative: Mistaken Identity
Personal Narrative: Mistaken Identity. Improved Essays. 1005 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Show More. Mistaken Identity Parents carefully think about the names that they would give to their child upon giving birth. It is so significant because that person will carry his or her name throughout their lifetime.
You Thrive on Mistaken Identity
York: Norton, "You Thrive on Mistaken Identity" 61. mouth-and the surrounding field shattered. the viewer takes a "masculine," sadistic position, field that splinters the fetishized female image philic pleasure into one of anxiety. The circumstantial tion, the intactness of the woman or image, is.
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The opposition between the individual's being and nothingness becomes an obsession for both characters in their relations with one another, an obsession that drives each of them to wonder ...
Mistaken Identity Essay
1. Mistaken Identity Essay Crafting an essay on the theme of "Mistaken Identity" can be a challenging endeavor, as it requires a delicate balance between narrative finesse, analytical depth, and thematic exploration. The complexity lies not only in presenting a compelling storyline but also in delving into the psychological and societal dimensions associated with mistaken identity.
3 Great Narrative Essay Examples + Tips for Writing
A narrative essay delivers its theme by deliberately weaving the motifs through the events, scenes, and details. While a narrative essay may be entertaining, its primary purpose is to tell a complete story based on a central meaning. Unlike other essay forms, it is totally okay—even expected—to use first-person narration in narrative essays.
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity: From Ego to Life Narrative
Finally, we argue for a narrative conception of identity, bending back to Erikson's conception of identity as a life story that reaches beyond the couch, presenting an updated concept of narrative identity which is enriched by psychoanalytic developments of the past fifty years. ... Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers. New York, NY ...
PDF Mistaken Identity: A Fiction with Intriguing Narrative of Nayantara Sahgal
The narrative style of Nayantara Sahgal's fiction is widely acknowledged for her political inclinations with political ... Mistaken Identity is at once a family saga, a romance, a rich historical novel, and, perhaps most keenly, a fable concerning the implacable working of karma.
Essay On Mistaken Identity
Essay On Mistaken Identity. We all have a calling and a purpose in life, and mine became evident to me when I read the book, Mistaken Identity. This book is about a girl who was involved in a serious car accident and suffered serious injuries, including head trauma. Part of the book focused on the demanding therapy she underwent, to be able to ...
How to Write a Narrative Essay
Interactive example of a narrative essay. An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt "Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself," is shown below. Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works. Narrative essay example.
Fantasia: Mistaken Identity
Mistaken Identity - a narrative essay. I strode across; a haunted expression encased my face, my raven hair fluttered in the wind. It was deep into the dark embers of the night, a fitting time for the deed I was about to commit. a humorless laugh escaped my lips as I remembered the terms people called me: sometimes death angel if they were kind ...
Mistaken Identities: First-Person Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro
Mistaken Identities: First-Person Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro. Margaret C. Scanlan. Published 1993. Art. Journal of Narrative and Life History. AbstractContemporary theorists tend to agree on the death of the subject and therefore, it seems, on the death of the first-person realistic novel.
A Case of Mistaken Identity
Social Short Story - A Case of Mistaken Identity. I tried to focus on the face that was obscured by the bright lights burning behind her. A dark shadow twitching nervously. I could make out the outline of her overcoat - a heavy suede brown coloured outfit. The hood of the coat covered the sides of her face.

Mistaken Identity Play Analysis

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Comedy Element in Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew"

A discussion of mistaken identity in William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew".

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3 Great Narrative Essay Examples + Tips for Writing

What Is a Narrative Essay?

3 Great Narrative Essay Examples

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Develop Strong Motifs

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Friday, May 17, 2013

Mistaken Identities: First-Person Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro

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Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness

A Case of Mistaken Identity

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