The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thruber Essay Example for Free

The out of sight Life of Walter Mitty by James Thruber EssayJames Thurber is iodine of the best know humorists in America, and the work The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is considered to be one of the Thurbers acknowledged masterpieces. The story was published in 1939 in the New Yorker magazine to great applause, and was first collected in his book My demesne and Welcome to It. In 1947, Hollywood released a movie of the same surname, starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo.The name of the main role Walter Mitty and the derivative word Mittyesque rich person entered the English language, describing an intellectual person, who spends more time in heroic solar daytime dreams than paying attention to the real world, or more seriously, one who deliberately tries to trick or swing others that he is something that he is non. In military circles, this usually refers to people who try and fake a victorious c atomic number 18er. The idea for Walter Mitty was got from a book Malice Aforethought by a leading British crime-fiction writer Antony Berkeley Cox.Here the main source is named Dr. Bickleigh, who runs away from unbearable reality into fantasies markedly similar in caliber to those of Mitty. Nevertheless, Walter Mitty is in truth much a Thurber protagonist, so much so that he has been called the archetype for dreamy, hapless, Thurber Man. corresponding many of his physically unimpressive male characters Thurber often paired with larger woman in his cartoons, Walter Mitty is dominated and put upon by his wife. Like a man who saw the unicorn, he escapes by way of fantasies. The title itself describes what this story is all about.Walters negative manner of speaking of himself makes the lecturer realize that he is not very happy in his life. He is an ordinary man, who first dreams about cosmos a air force officer of a hy trim backlane who should claim his crew out of danger from the hurricane. This short story is about a man, Walter Mitty, and his wi fe who make a trip to t birth, Waterbury, to run instructions. Mrs. Mitty needs to stop at the hair beauty salon and she commands her husband to leave the car at the mechanic and go to the store to buy overshoes and some incomprehensible objects that he couldnt recollect.Throughout the trip to town the antiquated man is lost in day dreams, where he is heroic at the end. These fantasies are the secret life of Walter Mitty. The real-life setting in this story is kind of mundane a hairdresser, a parking lot, a hotel lobby, a drugstore all all(prenominal)day elements of every town or city. The dimness or banality of these locations reflects the dullness of Mittys everyday life. This is pretty contrasted with the milieu of Walters fantasies a Navy hydroplane in a storm, an operating room, a courtroom, a dugout, a wall before a firing squad.These locations are tense, gripping, and out of the ordinary. The main character is a middle-aged, lower-middle-class man, flees from the routi ne drudgery of his suburban life into fantasies of heroic conquest. In the story Walter Mitty proves that he is a very forgetful and a really stubborn man with a vivid imagination. He is constantly existence distracted, and starts to dream often. His daydreams all has him as a successful, brave, heroic person, who is called in to save the day. Walter imagines himself the hero of his fantasies as a navy pilot commander, doctor, sharpshooter, bomber pilot, and noble victim of firing squad.His daydreams changes throughout the story. In his final vision, he sees himself facing a firing squad. It is another expression of his exceptional courage and bravery. Reading the story the reader understands that these dreams mean something more, the old man Mitty feels that he can be a lot more than what he is in his everyday life. The catching is the way Thurber introduces the changes of events Mr. Mitty is imaging. The story begins with him in one of his fantasies as a validity Navy pilot and then his wife cuts in saying Not so fast You are driving too fast .Walter was going so fast, because he was caught up in his imagination of being a naval pilot, he did not pay attention to how he was going. This was one of his many dreams. He imagines all these stories because he wants to make his life interesting. And his wife doesnt seem to support him, she is always nagging. Mittys wife treats him more homogeneous a child than a husband. She only sticks to her guns and doesnt let anything get by her. Thurber writes his story around Mittys daydreams and his return to reality. This novel seems to be the bunch of stories put in concert in one.In a Walter Mittys second daydream he is a know-it-all doctor, who fulfils a very difficult operation, on a millionaire banker. He seems to be brave saying I could fill killed Gregory Fitzhurst at 300 feet with my left hand. In the real life he isnt the one to perform an important operation he is merely an occasional bystander of the hospital . Mitty has no courage, and has no charisma and would never participate in such a daring act in reality. The next dream depicts Walter as a commander of a bomber in the military, resolving to fly it to the other troops to drop off more ammunition.He isnt putting up a flight or wearing a handkerchief over his eyes, he is behaving like a man. And again his imagination is interrupted. Walters dying dream finds him in front of a firing squad, very quiet, getting ready to be executed. The old man is actually just a observer of the Waterbury trial, wishing that he was an accused. Mitty hits the District Attorney, who tries to wake a beautiful woman up from devastation. Here Walter Mitty is urbane and triumphant too. Once again the creative fountainhead of the man has him doing something totally out of his league. Life places a great gap between wish and reality.This is straight for Walter Mitty, the main character in the story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. This man is far from bein g a respected man with a good career and his wife looks him down upon him. So he fabricates his own perception of reality, his daydreams, where he, Walter Mitty, is a hero and a leader. The way Mitty is in reality really contrasts the way he is in a partiality world. His incapacities in the real world quickly turn into abilities in illusion land. The man avoids weakness and does not let any pessimistic views ruin the complete opinion of his ideas.Every time the main hero has a daydream, he seems more and more unwilling to recognise in the real life. Why should anyone live in reality when you could live in a fantasy like that? Although Thurbers humorous stories, essays and illustrations were popular during his lifetime, the author has received little scholarly attention. Some literary critics rejected his works as little more than pattern and whimsical. Lately critics have become captive to James Thurbers literary mastery, such as his use of wordplay and attention to narrative f orm. The scholars have also debated the darker themes of his work which hide beneath the merriment.Others, referring to his tendency to depict domineering women, like Mrs. Mitty, and ill-fated men, like Walter, blame his treatment of women and views of marriage. In common with Charles Dickens Scrooge and George Orwells Big Brother, Walter Mitty has outgrown his literary grow to become an everyday metaphor for a certain type of character or behavior. This type of character had an influence on other humorists, notably Mad founder Harvey Kurtzman, playwright George Axelrod (who employed Mitty-like fantasies in The sevensome Year Itch) and animation director Chuck Jones (who created a Mitty-like child character for Warner Bros.cartoons).Works Cited1. James Thurber. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The Creative Company, 2008. 32p 2. Steve King, Thurber Mitty and Dangerous, http//www. todayinliterature. com/stories. asp? Event_Date=3/18/1939 3. MediaGuardian, Who is Walter Mitty? , 2003 -08-05 http//www. guardian. co. uk/media/2003/aug/05/iraqdossier. hutton 4. James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, http//www. geocities. com/SoHo/Cafe/6821/thurber. hypertext mark-up language