the secret life of walter mitty short story

Strangely, this proves to be the one thing that makes him genuinely extraordinary: he does not change.

However, these daydreams amount to little change in his actual life, for by the end of the story, he remains the exact same quiet, henpecked dreamer. Mitty doesn’t have much control over his life, but he does control his own interior world-he can prove his own worth, escape the confinements of his world, and be any kind of hero he wants to be, if only in his mind.In 1939, a man named James Thurber published a short story titled, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” The story is about a rather henpecked, ordinary man who spends most of his life daydreaming about being far more extraordinary than he is.

He doesn’t just dream of the exciting life he might have had it’s as if he truly lives the impossible adventures of his imagination, and this small but important distinction is what gives him at least a little bit of the strength and willpower he longs for. This sense of overlap is important for Mitty’s character. Similarly, in the final scene, Thurber transitions into Mitty’s firing-squad fantasy without a paragraph break-a formal decision that shows just how much Mitty’s two lives overlap in his mind. However, a turning point comes when, at the point in the courtroom fantasy when Mitty would be condemned, the word “cur” reminds him that the real Mitty needs to buy puppy biscuit-though his imagination can offer a temporary escape, he remains imprisoned in reality.Īs the story progresses, the fantasy life and reality life blend together more and more: When Mitty goes to the store to buy the puppy biscuit, he is still self-identifying as “the greatest pistol shot in the world” as he wonders what brand of biscuit to buy. His imagination can transform him from a man who struggles with tire chains to one who can fix an “anaesthetizer” with a ballpoint pen. Through his fantasies, Mitty can escape his wife’s nagging reminders to drive slowly and see the doctor he can tear through hurricanes and firestorms against all advice to the contrary, demanding obedience from sailors and surgeons.

More broadly, the themes and events in the fantasies are directly linked to the frustrations Mitty feels in reality, particularly his sense of not being in control of his own life. A newsboy’s shout about an ongoing trial triggers Mitty’s courtroom fantasy, and reading about aerial warfare turns him into a fighter pilot. While at first glance Walter Mitty’s dramatic “secret life” couldn’t be more different from his mundane, routine reality, there are connections between the two lives.

The secret life of walter mitty short story