The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
In James Thurber’s 1939s short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” the main
character Walter Mitty, uses his imagination as a need to escape and express the emotions of
anger along with self-pit that he feels daily. By means of daydreaming, he is able to escape the
trivial details of everyday life and achieve freedom from his reality. Through the literary
essentials of character, tone, and symbolism, James Thurber is able to illustrate how Walter
Mitty escapes his everyday life by fantasizing.
The title of this fascinating story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” confirms to the
reader that they will be involved in Walter Mitty’s “secret life” which surely is his imagination.
During the course of the story, Walter Mitty experiences five daydreams where he renovates
himself as somebody else, a grander, more improved self. In these daydreams, Walter Mitty is
often a brave and heroic figure, while in reality he is only a regular, insignificant man living an
average life.
The story was very compelling to me because it caught my attention right from the start
with its tone of intensity and danger in the opening paragraph when he demands that the air craft
he is piloting as a Navy Commander head straight through a major storm. As the paragraph
comes to an end one of the personnel on the plane reaffirms another that Mitty would be able to
get them through it, that the old man was afraid of nothing (Clugston, 2010). However, in
everyday life the main character avoids conflict and danger.
Then during the very next paragraph we realize that it was nothing more than Mitty
getting lost inside his own imagination as he is actually driving his wife into town. The
realization sets in when his wife yells at him for going several miles over the speed limit. The
short story is also somewhat humorous in that the author puts Mitty in situations that are
In James Thurber’s 1939s short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” the main
character Walter Mitty, uses his imagination as a need to escape and express the emotions of
anger along with self-pit that he feels daily. By means of daydreaming, he is able to escape the
trivial details of everyday life and achieve freedom from his reality. Through the literary
essentials of character, tone, and symbolism, James Thurber is able to illustrate how Walter
Mitty escapes his everyday life by fantasizing.
The title of this fascinating story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” confirms to the
reader that they will be involved in Walter Mitty’s “secret life” which surely is his imagination.
During the course of the story, Walter Mitty experiences five daydreams where he renovates
himself as somebody else, a grander, more improved self. In these daydreams, Walter Mitty is
often a brave and heroic figure, while in reality he is only a regular, insignificant man living an
average life.
The story was very compelling to me because it caught my attention right from the start
with its tone of intensity and danger in the opening paragraph when he demands that the air craft
he is piloting as a Navy Commander head straight through a major storm. As the paragraph
comes to an end one of the personnel on the plane reaffirms another that Mitty would be able to
get them through it, that the old man was afraid of nothing (Clugston, 2010). However, in
everyday life the main character avoids conflict and danger.
Then during the very next paragraph we realize that it was nothing more than Mitty
getting lost inside his own imagination as he is actually driving his wife into town. The
realization sets in when his wife yells at him for going several miles over the speed limit. The
short story is also somewhat humorous in that the author puts Mitty in situations that are