Thornhill is an innocent man struggling to prove his innocence due to being mistaken for George Kaplan, who doesn’t actually exist. During his struggle he is put in many situations that ordinarily he wouldn’t be. For example the scenes where he has to dodge a crop duster coming right for him, fight bad guys on the top of Mount Rushmore, and where he is wrongly accused of stabbing Townsend at the United Nations building.
You pretty much get a good idea of Thornhill’s personality right from the opening conversation between him and his assistant. Especially when he shows that he has no problem with telling lies by calling them an “exaggeration”. You also see more of what he’s like by how he gets along with his mother. Money seems more important to both of them than their actual relationship with each other. The shift from his own personality to George Kaplan begins when he starts pretending he is Kaplan. In one scene he is in Kaplan’s hotel room and pretends he is Kaplan to anyone that knocks on the door while he’s there. He even answers the phone as George Kaplan.
As the story progresses Thornhill begins to assume more and more of Kaplan’s identity. He was in a way envisioning what he believed Kaplan was like and then taking on those characteristics. Since Kaplan doesn’t actually exist I think that Thornhill was becoming Kaplan.
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