Psychoanalysis of Walter Mitty
ENGL 2342.MS1
27 May 2014
The Psychoanalysis of Walter Mitty In James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, the character Walter Mitty suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder. He is continuously imagining himself in alternate realities throughout the story, most of which are reflected around war. The different fantasies that he imagines himself in are driving a Navy hydroplane, performing an intense medical operation, being put on trial in a courtroom, flying an Air Force jet, and lastly facing a firing squad. Some sort of form of stress triggers each of these scenarios. Walter Mitty also has struggles with expressing his emotions to other people and keeps everything to himself throughout the story. For example when Walter Mitty takes his car to get worked on the repair man gives Walter Mitty a look of masculinity insinuating that he knows what he is doing and Walter has no idea. In Walter’s mind he is not very pleased with the way he is being treated and makes a statement about how the next time he brings in his car to be repaired he will wear his arm in a sling to show that it would not have been possible for him to repair his own car. Memory is another recurring issue for Walter, in the story Walter’s wife, Mrs. Mitty, sends Walter out to buy new shoes as well as dog food although Walter cannot remember that he needed to buy the dog food. Walter even says that this is not the first time he has forgotten what his wife told him to get, “In a way he hated these weekly trips to town-he was always getting something wrong” (Thurber 1449). The thought of forgetting items for his wife is also a stress trigger for Walter, in this situation he imagines himself on trial in a courtroom. According to an article from the British Medical Journal, these different experiences that Walter Mitty has are symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Some of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder are reliving nightmares about a specific traumatizing
27 May 2014
The Psychoanalysis of Walter Mitty In James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, the character Walter Mitty suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder. He is continuously imagining himself in alternate realities throughout the story, most of which are reflected around war. The different fantasies that he imagines himself in are driving a Navy hydroplane, performing an intense medical operation, being put on trial in a courtroom, flying an Air Force jet, and lastly facing a firing squad. Some sort of form of stress triggers each of these scenarios. Walter Mitty also has struggles with expressing his emotions to other people and keeps everything to himself throughout the story. For example when Walter Mitty takes his car to get worked on the repair man gives Walter Mitty a look of masculinity insinuating that he knows what he is doing and Walter has no idea. In Walter’s mind he is not very pleased with the way he is being treated and makes a statement about how the next time he brings in his car to be repaired he will wear his arm in a sling to show that it would not have been possible for him to repair his own car. Memory is another recurring issue for Walter, in the story Walter’s wife, Mrs. Mitty, sends Walter out to buy new shoes as well as dog food although Walter cannot remember that he needed to buy the dog food. Walter even says that this is not the first time he has forgotten what his wife told him to get, “In a way he hated these weekly trips to town-he was always getting something wrong” (Thurber 1449). The thought of forgetting items for his wife is also a stress trigger for Walter, in this situation he imagines himself on trial in a courtroom. According to an article from the British Medical Journal, these different experiences that Walter Mitty has are symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Some of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder are reliving nightmares about a specific traumatizing