The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty Sparknotes

This event from "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" occurred only in the confines of the short story's main character by the same name’s mind. It is simply an illustration of how Mitty can take mundane situations like shopping for puppy biscuits and escape from it using his imagination. Written by James Thurber and published in The New Yorker, in 1939 “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was an instant hit. This four page story takes place in the tiny town of Waterbury, Connecticut during the same year. Along with spawning a major motion picture in 1947 and a remake more recently in 2013, it also gave America a new archetype; “The Walter Mitty Complex”. Despite being written three-quarters of a century ago, Thurber's idea of a middle-aged man struggling
Born in 1894 in Columbus, Ohio he started writing at a young age and became an accomplished humorist writer, poet, and cartoonist. He had the privilege to work with E.B. White, the writer of the famous children’s story “Charlotte's Web”, at The New Yorker. During their time at the magazine, they co-authored "Is Sex Necessary” in which Thurber displayed not only his views on matrimony (which may have been a product of his failing marriage at the time) but also his neurotic approach to life and writing. Thurber was a constant worrier, a trait that can be traced back to his immediate family who, were rumored to have left their valuables on the front porch every night with a note telling thieves to take what they wanted but not to hurt them. Consequently “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” experienced fourteen rewrites before it was submitted for publication (Kellman). James Thurber was forty-five when he wrote the story and underwent a regretfully sad later life. Not to depreciate his acquired blindness, divorce, or alcoholism; a curiosity arises in the fact that he was approximately the same age as his character and the repercussions this may have had on his work. Thurber most likely would have embedded his own feelings and ideas into Walter Mitty's character. Perhaps some generational issues, discussed later, could have been at play when designing Mitty.
They were the first to have refrigeration, cars, and plumbing. Their parents had to chop a tree down to have timber to cook the meat they hunted, killed, and butchered. Mitty just had to buy the timber and the meat. While he would be glad that he avoided this hard manual labor, he would also feel that he could not prove himself or live up to his parents' examples. People think mid-life crises are tough now; imagine what individuals from that generation would have