The Business Trip

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

The term “doppelganger” describes a mysterious double or duplicate of a person and is often connected to works featuring the supernatural, such as Stranger With My Face (1981), a young adult novel by Lois Duncan where the protagonist’s twin uses astral projection, or the video game Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987), where the hero has to fight his shadow self in the final challenge. The term comes from the German words doppel (double) and ganger (goer), meaning “double walker,” and originally referred to an apparition or shadow self that mirrors an individual. In folklore, encountering a doppelganger is often considered a bad omen, signifying death and misfortune.

The concept of the doppelganger has evolved into a literary and psychological concept that explores identity, duality, and the uncanny nature of the self. The doppelganger can represent an alternate self, a repressed part of the psyche, or an external force threatening to consume or replace one’s original identity.

One of the most well-known literary depictions of the doppelganger appears in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “William Wilson” (1839). The tale follows a narrator, William Wilson, who encounters another man named William Wilson, who is identical in both appearance and