Roger Thornhill likes to carry around a matchbox with his initials on it, in the middle of them there is a ‘0’, as in R ‘0’ T. Thornhill has no middle name. This is the key to the concept of the film ‘North by Northwest’. The ‘0’ represents that there is a hole in the plot: the man, the myth, the legend… Kaplan. Even Thornhill realises that he is a non-entity in his own reality, a ‘0’, and yet he accepts Kaplan as someone that has control over his freedom, and so he becomes him, even though (or because of) Kaplan doesn’t even exist. It is obvious that mistaken identity is the main component in this film; but the fact is that Hitchcock uses it as a way to portray the character’s insecurity in himself. Thornhill becomes Kaplan, and is suddenly plunged into a new, exciting world that brings him adventure and love. Isn’t this exactly what everyone wants in movies, a sense of escape? Because that’s exactly what Thornhill gets when he becomes the ‘0’ in his initials, and that’s his liberation from normality and his identity.