Walter Mitty's Short Story 'Living A Double Life'
Living a Double Life
Desiré P. Edmond
ENG 125 - Introduction to Literature
Instructor: Irene Robles-Huerta
December 16, 2013
Living a Double Life
In James Thurber’s short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Walter Mitty uses his dreams as a means of escaping and to convey his feelings of irritation and unhappiness. When an individual daydreams, they have the tendency of escaping the trivial aspects of life and attaining a sense of freedom from their real world situations. In the usage of the literary elements of character, setting, and symbolism, the author contributes to the larger narrative theme of fantasy and reality in showing how Walter Mitty leads a double life in the world of make believe by daydreaming.
A theme is created when a story focuses on a general principal idea, forms it in a distinctive fashion, and makes that …show more content…
idea tangible; in simpler terms, the theme in a story is a portrayal of the idea behind the story (Clugston, 2010). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a satire that exercises the combination of using imagination and true-to-life fiction. The story presents Walter Mitty as a typical middle-aged male who wants to avoid his humdrum life by frequently visiting his extravagant world of make believe. If anyone of you has ever day dreamed before, it makes it easier to relate to Walter. The story focuses on diversion from being in an uninteresting life into the world of daydreams generated by provocations from his spouse. This short story describes the stereotypical male and female roles of an apprehensive husband and an over bearing wife (Cummings, 2009).
The character of Walter Mitty in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" happens to be a bit of a daydreamer. A great deal of his time is spent imagining that he is someone besides himself. In all of his daydreams, he fantasizes of being effective, brave, a gallant person, who is summoned to be the hero of the day. He envisions himself to be the conqueror in his fantasies as a commanding navy pilot, a surgeon, a weapons expert, a war plane pilot, and the virtuous casualty of a firing squad. His bride, often seen as an immoral and malicious woman, regards him more like a youth than as her husband. This is exactly the type of wife he needs, acting as an alter ego, because of his adolescent inclination to avoid the real world by escaping into a world of fantasies (Heller, 2001).
As we move on to the story’s settings, the setting is the time or place where the action takes place and it puts a fence around the action while defining the setting where conflicts and character development can be observed (Clugston, 2010). The setting all through the majority of the story has Mitty driving his wife throughout town, and then to the hairdresser while he takes care of running some errands. His wife first scolds him for driving too fast and then while stalled at a green light, he gets yelled at by another driver. He finds it difficult to park, and then has a memory lapse forgetting what it was he was asked to get from the grocery store while Mrs. Mitty was getting her hair fixed. However, throughout his fantasies, Mitty observes himself controlling challenging circumstances in more interesting settings, such as, a commander of a Navy hydroplane, a surgeon in an operating room, an accused witness on trial, a captain of a warplane, and lastly facing a firing squad. The dissimilarity relating to Mitty 's actual life and his daydreams is what makes this short story humorous (Mann, 1982).
Now, we will discuss the symbolism of the story.
Symbols are something that has a precise distinctiveness but really means something different; it is commonly recognized and has been progressed over an extensive length of time (Clugston, 2010). The gloves and sling are two of the main symbols in this short story. Mitty is told by his wife that he should be wearing his gloves and submissively, he puts them on at her bitter request. However, once she gets out of the car, he takes them right back off, establishing his own manliness and capability to make his own decisions. Unfortunately, he quickly puts them on again after being scolded by a police officer for driving too slowly. As he daydreams of becoming Dr. Mitty, the prominent surgeon, he once again removes the gloves. The gloves and the sling share a similar representation of Mitty’s power and the rise and fall of his situational control. In this symbolic relationship, Mitty is appreciated, strong-minded, well-liked and authoritative in his imagination; whereas in reality, he is henpecked, clumsy, unskilled and ineffective (Cheatham,
1990).
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a story by James Thurber which tells a narrative interpretation about Walter Mitty who often daydreams in order to provide a distraction from his routine livelihood filled with governing and pestering. This story adds to the theme of fantasy and reality through the usage of the literary elements of character, setting, and symbolism. The relationships among these literary elements greatly enhance our understanding about the fundamental nature in living a double life of fantasy and reality in today’s society.
.
References:
Cheatham, G. (1990). The Secret Sin of Walter Mitty?. Studies In Short Fiction, 27(4), 608.
Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books
Cummings, M. (2009). The secret life of walter mitty . Retrieved from http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides6/Mitty.html
Heller, T. (2001). James Thurber. Critical Survey Of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition, 1-4.
Mann, A. (1982). TAKING CARE OF WALTER MITTY. Studies In Short Fiction, 19(4), 351.
Desiré P. Edmond
ENG 125 - Introduction to Literature
Instructor: Irene Robles-Huerta
December 16, 2013
Living a Double Life
In James Thurber’s short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Walter Mitty uses his dreams as a means of escaping and to convey his feelings of irritation and unhappiness. When an individual daydreams, they have the tendency of escaping the trivial aspects of life and attaining a sense of freedom from their real world situations. In the usage of the literary elements of character, setting, and symbolism, the author contributes to the larger narrative theme of fantasy and reality in showing how Walter Mitty leads a double life in the world of make believe by daydreaming.
A theme is created when a story focuses on a general principal idea, forms it in a distinctive fashion, and makes that …show more content…
idea tangible; in simpler terms, the theme in a story is a portrayal of the idea behind the story (Clugston, 2010). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a satire that exercises the combination of using imagination and true-to-life fiction. The story presents Walter Mitty as a typical middle-aged male who wants to avoid his humdrum life by frequently visiting his extravagant world of make believe. If anyone of you has ever day dreamed before, it makes it easier to relate to Walter. The story focuses on diversion from being in an uninteresting life into the world of daydreams generated by provocations from his spouse. This short story describes the stereotypical male and female roles of an apprehensive husband and an over bearing wife (Cummings, 2009).
The character of Walter Mitty in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" happens to be a bit of a daydreamer. A great deal of his time is spent imagining that he is someone besides himself. In all of his daydreams, he fantasizes of being effective, brave, a gallant person, who is summoned to be the hero of the day. He envisions himself to be the conqueror in his fantasies as a commanding navy pilot, a surgeon, a weapons expert, a war plane pilot, and the virtuous casualty of a firing squad. His bride, often seen as an immoral and malicious woman, regards him more like a youth than as her husband. This is exactly the type of wife he needs, acting as an alter ego, because of his adolescent inclination to avoid the real world by escaping into a world of fantasies (Heller, 2001).
As we move on to the story’s settings, the setting is the time or place where the action takes place and it puts a fence around the action while defining the setting where conflicts and character development can be observed (Clugston, 2010). The setting all through the majority of the story has Mitty driving his wife throughout town, and then to the hairdresser while he takes care of running some errands. His wife first scolds him for driving too fast and then while stalled at a green light, he gets yelled at by another driver. He finds it difficult to park, and then has a memory lapse forgetting what it was he was asked to get from the grocery store while Mrs. Mitty was getting her hair fixed. However, throughout his fantasies, Mitty observes himself controlling challenging circumstances in more interesting settings, such as, a commander of a Navy hydroplane, a surgeon in an operating room, an accused witness on trial, a captain of a warplane, and lastly facing a firing squad. The dissimilarity relating to Mitty 's actual life and his daydreams is what makes this short story humorous (Mann, 1982).
Now, we will discuss the symbolism of the story.
Symbols are something that has a precise distinctiveness but really means something different; it is commonly recognized and has been progressed over an extensive length of time (Clugston, 2010). The gloves and sling are two of the main symbols in this short story. Mitty is told by his wife that he should be wearing his gloves and submissively, he puts them on at her bitter request. However, once she gets out of the car, he takes them right back off, establishing his own manliness and capability to make his own decisions. Unfortunately, he quickly puts them on again after being scolded by a police officer for driving too slowly. As he daydreams of becoming Dr. Mitty, the prominent surgeon, he once again removes the gloves. The gloves and the sling share a similar representation of Mitty’s power and the rise and fall of his situational control. In this symbolic relationship, Mitty is appreciated, strong-minded, well-liked and authoritative in his imagination; whereas in reality, he is henpecked, clumsy, unskilled and ineffective (Cheatham,
1990).
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a story by James Thurber which tells a narrative interpretation about Walter Mitty who often daydreams in order to provide a distraction from his routine livelihood filled with governing and pestering. This story adds to the theme of fantasy and reality through the usage of the literary elements of character, setting, and symbolism. The relationships among these literary elements greatly enhance our understanding about the fundamental nature in living a double life of fantasy and reality in today’s society.
.
References:
Cheatham, G. (1990). The Secret Sin of Walter Mitty?. Studies In Short Fiction, 27(4), 608.
Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books
Cummings, M. (2009). The secret life of walter mitty . Retrieved from http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides6/Mitty.html
Heller, T. (2001). James Thurber. Critical Survey Of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition, 1-4.
Mann, A. (1982). TAKING CARE OF WALTER MITTY. Studies In Short Fiction, 19(4), 351.