Twins by Eric Wright

To outwit someone it means you have deceived or defeated him or her by greater ingenuity.

In the short story “Twins” by Eric Wright, there are many examples of how people can be easily outwitted. This short story is about a man who takes his wife to an old mine shaft to explain his next murder mystery novel. The wife realizes that he is actually planning to kill her, and is explaining everything to her. In a turn of events she ends up killing him and fulfilling his plan.

Three areas in the story where Eric Wright shows how people can be easily outwitted are: when his wife figures out his plan and loads his gun with blanks, when she ends up turning his plan around on him, and finally when the police do not suspect her. These are all examples of how people can easily be outwitted because they show how the husband and the police were both clueless to the entire situation.In the story, the husband believes he had devised an ingenious plan to murder his wife. When in fact, his wife had actually outwitted him, “She turned and saw that her last question was answered.

It wasn’t a game” (Wright 216). Throughout the entire trip to the mine shaft the wife had been suspicious about the husband’s motives. It is at that moment of the story that the wife suspicions are confirmed. “’It’ll work, all right. It’s going to work.

’ He pulled the trigger once, twice, three times” (wright 216). Although the readers do not know it yet, this is when his wife turns his plan around on him. After he shoots three times he realizes that nothing shot out of the gun. His wife then turns to him, pulls out a gun and shoots him.

This part in the short story reflects how people can be easily outwitted because the husband thought that he had perfected his plan, when in fact his wife had figured it out, and outwitted him by replaces that bullets in his gun with blanks.In the days before the trip to the mineshaft, the wife had become suspicious of her husbands actions. The wife had noticed some things about the husband that lead her to find out he was cheating on her, “If she had not long known about the lady in the condominium,” (Wright 217). This first statement is a prime example of how people can be easily outwitted because not only did she figure out his plan, she also found out that he had been cheating on her. Even with the husbands efforts to keep the other women a secret the wife managed to find out.

She first became suspicious of her husband while she was searching through her husband’s things for a pair of pliers, “and if she had not come across his fishing tackle box with the loaded gun, the wig, and the make-up kit, packed ready to go,” (Wright 217). This part of the sentence shows how, despite the husbands best attempts to also hide the tackle box, she still managed to find it, therefore outwitting him.After the wife has killed her husband she went through with his plan. She checked into the motel as herself, she pretended to fight with her ‘husband’ and left him a message the next morning incase he called the motel after having supposedly left early that morning.

After a few days she called the police to report him missing. “They made some routine enquiries, but they weren’t very interested” (Wright 216). The police were outwitted because they did not think that anything was suspicious. They did not suspect the wife, or foul play. Even though this was the first time the wife had murdered someone, she still managed to outwit the police. “They did establish that he had a girlfriend tucked away in a condominium on Sherbourne Street, and they kept an eye on her place but she was as mystified as they were and he certainly never showed up” (Wright 216).

This sentence explains how the husbands girlfriend was clueless to the fact the wife had murdered him. She managed to outwit his girlfriend who might have even known about his plan to kill his wife.Outwitting someone is something that many people may find difficult. Yet in the story “Twins” by Eric Wright, there are many examples of people being outwitted. The husbands plan to murder his wife backfire when his wife outwits him and ends up turning his plan on him. Before the trip she found a tackle box with a loaded gun and a wig, which is when her suspicions began.

After she became aware that her husband was cheating on her, she knew that he must have been planning something. She replaced the bullets in that gun with blanks, and let him attempt his plan to make sure it was true. Sure enough it was, and the pieces began to fit together. The husband realized that he had been outwitted and the wife managed to outwit the police and his girlfriend.