Comparing Secret Life Of Walter Mitty And I 'M Going !'
Theme and corresponding works in the short stories Secret Life of Walter Mitty and I’m Going!
Benjamin McDonald
Ashford University
English 125
Professor Smith August 24, 2012
Gender roles and marriage have been stereotyped for years. The husband earned a living while the woman stayed home did the cooking and laundry and raised the kids. Today, however, roles have reversed in many households. The husbands stay home and take care of the children, do the cooking, and run the errands while the wife earns the income. The biggest change over the years is that the husband and wife both work to make-ends meet. In comparing and contrasting James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and Tristan Bernard’s, I’m going! …show more content…
The difference between this story and “I’m Going!” Is that this story is told in the third person narrative, omniscient. The conflict in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is three-fold. Mitty’s conflict in the real world versus Mitty’s conflict in his fantasy world, Mitty’s conflict with his wife,and Mitty’s confict with society and his struggle to follow conventional social norms. The themes are “escapism,” Mitty daydreams to escape his wife’s henpecking, “boosting the ego” when Mitty makes himself the hero of his daydreams, and “adventure” with Mitty’s ordinary man becoming an extraordinary hero.
In Mitty’s story it too begins to rain, not at the beginning of the sory, but at the end. Another similarity with “I’m Going!”, Mitty is henpecked by his wife and beaten down by life throughout the sotry, hence his daydreaming of hero fantasies. Mitty is trying to make it through life’s everyday challenges and his nagging wife. Yet, he stays married. The difference between Mitty and Henri is that Henri gets to do something fun and Mitty imagines that he is about to be put to death by a firing squad in his last daydream, indicating that Mitty’s fate is to lose his battle with his boring, mundane
Benjamin McDonald
Ashford University
English 125
Professor Smith August 24, 2012
Gender roles and marriage have been stereotyped for years. The husband earned a living while the woman stayed home did the cooking and laundry and raised the kids. Today, however, roles have reversed in many households. The husbands stay home and take care of the children, do the cooking, and run the errands while the wife earns the income. The biggest change over the years is that the husband and wife both work to make-ends meet. In comparing and contrasting James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and Tristan Bernard’s, I’m going! …show more content…
The difference between this story and “I’m Going!” Is that this story is told in the third person narrative, omniscient. The conflict in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is three-fold. Mitty’s conflict in the real world versus Mitty’s conflict in his fantasy world, Mitty’s conflict with his wife,and Mitty’s confict with society and his struggle to follow conventional social norms. The themes are “escapism,” Mitty daydreams to escape his wife’s henpecking, “boosting the ego” when Mitty makes himself the hero of his daydreams, and “adventure” with Mitty’s ordinary man becoming an extraordinary hero.
In Mitty’s story it too begins to rain, not at the beginning of the sory, but at the end. Another similarity with “I’m Going!”, Mitty is henpecked by his wife and beaten down by life throughout the sotry, hence his daydreaming of hero fantasies. Mitty is trying to make it through life’s everyday challenges and his nagging wife. Yet, he stays married. The difference between Mitty and Henri is that Henri gets to do something fun and Mitty imagines that he is about to be put to death by a firing squad in his last daydream, indicating that Mitty’s fate is to lose his battle with his boring, mundane