The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty Analysis

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber demonstrates how excessive dreaming can have a harmful effect on one’s life and the lives of those around him, as shown in Walter Mitty’s unrestrained imagination. Walter Mitty slips into trances often during everyday activities, and they contrast extremely with his mundane life. While daydreaming about being a heroic doctor, Walter Mitty mindlessly tries to park, and a parking lot attendant yells to Mitty to get in the right lane so he does not crash. The worker offers to take over the job, and Mitty reluctantly agrees, thinking: “they think they know everything” (Thurber 337). Driving requires one’s uncompromised attention, and Mitty is not only distracted, but in a completely different world,
He sacrifices the quality of his actual lifestyle for imagining a perfect one, and it has an overall negative effect on his life. Often, Mitty’s dreams are sparked by something that actually happens, such as one occasion, when: “He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot. … ‘It’s the millionaire banker Wellington McMillan,’ said the pretty nurse” (336). The stark contrast between the dull reality of driving “aimlessly” and the exciting and suspenseful task of saving a millionaire illustrates how different Mitty’s ideal life is from his actual one. Although it is necessary to imagine in order to know what one’s desired path is, Mitty’s dreaming gets in the way of his goals. He spends most of his time imagining the glamourous life he wants to live instead of working to achieve it, and this interference of fantasy into reality is what leads Mitty to settle for mediocrity and prevents him from living a full life. Mitty’s habit of uncontrollably daydreaming reveals that too much imagination can negatively impact one’s life, along with the ones of the people close to