The Theme of the Short Story “identities” by W.D. Valgardson
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The short story “Identities” by W.D. Valgardson, is about a wealthy man that is lost in a dangerous looking neighbourhood. He looks like some of the thugs that live there causing an inexperienced police officer to mistake him for a thug. This short story is about stereotypes. People just judge people by the way they look without even knowing them. This is wrong.
The main character in this story looks like all the other high-class people who live in rich neighbourhoods. He “drives a Mercedes-Benz,” and seems to be in a crisis. He is in a ghetto neighbourhood with “houses that are squat… having slowly sunk into the ground.” A police officer makes a mistake and thinks that the main character is a thief. He was searching for a way out of the neighbourhood for a very long so he looked really bad. In turn, it looked as if he stole his own car because he looked like a thief. The cop thought he was a thief because the man looked dirty/rough. The man believed that the cop would help him, and was thankful to see him. After that, his hand went to his back pocket to take out his identity card but the cop thought he was probably getting a gun. The story ends here but the author says it in a way that the reader thinks that officer killed the man but who knows what actually happened. He leaves the story in suspense.
From the beginning, the author tells us the protagonists fate by revealing the series of unfortunate events. He is a wealthy man belonging to a good family, lost in a shady part of town in an expensive car. People in areas like these are usually desperate for money, and robbing a rich man in his Mercedes-Benz would be a very likely event. Most fatal of all is that a police officer takes him for a thug as stated in the following quote. “He is so intent upon the future that… he does not notice the police car… follow him.” This one event, mixed with the stereotype the protagonist has thrown upon him by the cop, may or may not seal his fate.
The end of the short story proves that stereotypes are dangerous to society. The police officer who makes a wrong move