WALTER MITTY
Name: Walter Mitty
Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and
in book form in My World and Welcome to It in 1942. It was made into a film in
1947.
Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs
he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care
killer. The character's name has come into more general use to refer to an
ineffectual dreamer, appearing in several dictionaries. The American Heritage
Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as "an ordinary, often ineffectual person who
indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs."
Although the story has humorous elements, some critics see a darker and more
significant message underlying the text, leading to a more tragic interpretation
of the Mitty character. Even in his heroic daydreams, Mitty does not triumph,
several fantasies being interrupted before the final one sees Mitty dying
bravely in front of a firing squad. In addition, it is possible to read the
events in the story as the responses to the stress of reality by an aging man
who is sliding into senescence. In the brief snatches of reality that punctuate
Mitty's fantasies we meet well-meaning but insensitive strangers who
inadvertently rob Mitty of some of his remaining dignity.
His wife is the only inhabitant of reality that we meet more than once. Thurber
cleverly leads us into accepting her as a nag by giving Mitty's fantasies a
charming lightness and comic-book simplicity that disarms deeper scrutiny. On
the other hand, her final appearance suggests that she is a woman struggling to
cope as her role shifts from loving life-partner to care-giver as Mitty slowly
slides into his second childhood.
Name: Walter Mitty
Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and
in book form in My World and Welcome to It in 1942. It was made into a film in
1947.
Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs
he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care
killer. The character's name has come into more general use to refer to an
ineffectual dreamer, appearing in several dictionaries. The American Heritage
Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as "an ordinary, often ineffectual person who
indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs."
Although the story has humorous elements, some critics see a darker and more
significant message underlying the text, leading to a more tragic interpretation
of the Mitty character. Even in his heroic daydreams, Mitty does not triumph,
several fantasies being interrupted before the final one sees Mitty dying
bravely in front of a firing squad. In addition, it is possible to read the
events in the story as the responses to the stress of reality by an aging man
who is sliding into senescence. In the brief snatches of reality that punctuate
Mitty's fantasies we meet well-meaning but insensitive strangers who
inadvertently rob Mitty of some of his remaining dignity.
His wife is the only inhabitant of reality that we meet more than once. Thurber
cleverly leads us into accepting her as a nag by giving Mitty's fantasies a
charming lightness and comic-book simplicity that disarms deeper scrutiny. On
the other hand, her final appearance suggests that she is a woman struggling to
cope as her role shifts from loving life-partner to care-giver as Mitty slowly
slides into his second childhood.