Fantasy in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

” The 18-year-old girl dreams of attending college, and in her family, “no one in her family goes to college (“Where Dreams Come From”, stanza 2, line 7).” She wants to have a proper education and become a figure in the real world. Her family is sitting on the sidelines of civilization and she is sick of that fact. That household is aware of this; nonetheless, she still is not allowed to leave. Walter Mitty is no different. His wife is domineering and infuriating, as she constantly admonishes him and tells him he is doing everything incorrect. For instance, when Mitty accidentally speed up his Buick, his wife screeched at him that, “he was driving too fast (“Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, page 1, paragraph 2),” when he “was up to fifty-five km/hr. while knowing her comfort-level was forty-five km/hr.” She prohibits this poor soul from living his life by controlling his every-being than he does of his own body. He cannot accomplish his dream. His desire is not similar to the girl’s. He yearns of being heroic and the center of attention. However, he is the exact opposite and his wife frequently pushes him off the cliff of confidence, where his spirit is shattered. Not only that, he often questions her, “ If it ever occurs to her that he is sometimes thinking.” And she rubs it

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a fun adventure movie about a man who wants to be brave

In James Thurber's “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” the movie and short story have much different external conflicts. During the short story, Walter's wife is always nagging at him and making his life difficult, while in the movie and it Walter's boss and co-workers who are giving him a hard time.Walter experiences his wife complaining while on their way into town, ¨Not so fast! You're driving too fast...What are you driving so fast for¨ (Thurber 1). He is not paying attention because he is daydreaming about more exciting things than what is going on in his life. In the movie Walter is very busy and nervous so he messes up an assignment and he goes into a daydream. Walter was sitting in the elevator

    In the movie the movie of Walter Mitty they had more places for the setting, while in the short story the setting only takes place in a city named Waterbury where all they do is run errands. It had basically explained how they were in Waterbury but different places within the city. Due to this the short story didn't have many characters. However in the movie Walter was in the office and traveled many places. He was trying to track down Sean O’Connell to set negative 25 which was the cover photo. Some of the places Walter traveled included Greenland, Iceland, and Afghanistan, while he did these things it showed him that he is an important person. Every time Walter traveled he would always have some type of daydream, an example is when he was on the way to the volcano and he fell due to a daydream he had. Therefore the daydreams that Walter has affects what he gets done and i say that the movie adds much more detail than the short story.

Characterization is great to have in a short story such as "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". Thurber shows characterization right from the beginning of the short story. The start of the story takes place in Walter's first day dream where he is flying an aircraft in the war but his wife ends up coming into the daydream and telling him he needs to slow down. Walter Mitty is a dynamic character because he is always changing and becoming more and more out of his wife's control. In the story, Walter is faced with a lot of hardship with his wife ruining his daydreams. His daydreams are a way for him to get away from reality and for him to be whoever he wants to be. "We only live

Life is about finding yourself, each other, and being true to one’s self. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an extremely original and creative story written by James Thurber. The movie, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, conveys a daydreamer escaping his typical life by disappearing into a realm of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. In both the movie and the book, the title character retreats into fantasy as an escape from his mundane reality because in the real world, he is ordinary, insecure, and passive. In the short story, Walter

Second, a lot of character traits are shown for each person in the film. Walter Mitty is very shy and quiet at first but then changes throughout the movie. “To see the world, things dangerous come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” This quote can relate to Walter Mitty having a very shy, quiet, and awkward life. After going through all the action, danger, and experiencing all sorts of obstacles to find Sean, he became a person that stood up to everything he didn’t like. He was not afraid to speak up and make a move. Also, he was a braver person. Cheryl was also very quiet and turned out to be a very helpful and supportive person. She helped him

The difference between Seven-billion people in the world is identity. Identity is unique and hard to understand because everybody wants to be someone and people have a hard time figuring out what that means. In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Walter is a man who is tired of his boring life when he realizes he has not amounted to anything. This makes him realize he does not have an identity. He overcomes this in many ways, and one of them is by traveling. This is also done in Pico Iyers “Why We Travel, ”an essay about how traveling can open the mind. The Short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is about an older man who is using his imagination to cope with his midlife crisis. The theme they both have in common is identity, in each

What appears in your mind when you hear the word “dream”? According to Oxford Dictionaries, the first meaning of dream is “A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep” (dream). Is dreaming limited with only this definition? In my opinion, dreaming is something unlimited. It has lots of meanings. It is the the source of happiness for life. Fantasy, goal, wish, vision, unreality, extraordinary are some of the synonyms of dream according to Thesaurus.com. These words show me that dreaming can create several impressions in different people’s minds. All of these synonyms have a similar connotation. All of them are used in a positive way in daily life by the great majority of people all around the world. Does dream have a positive connotation all the time? As I was looking at the synonyms of dream, another word attracted my attention: daydream. The difference of the word “daydream” from the other synonyms of dream is its connotation. Even though the words “dream” and “daydream” sound really similar and have the same origin, dream

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” presents us with a character who finds his escape through fantasies to suggest that when one’s unable to stand up against harassers, imagination and dreams will nourish confidence and self- image. For instance, at the end of the story, Walter Mitty’s use of the words “erect and motionless”, “proud and disdainful”, “Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last” suggests his

Even when people do not realize it, everyone is always learning from other people. Characters in stories all have a variety of different personalities. One character from the stories desires to be daring and fearless, while the other character is both both of those qualities. Since one character desires to be something that he is not, he puts his imagination to the test and makes his own perfect scenarios.

Reaching a goal is something that people have experienced a lot with. A goal is an objective we all have, whether it is long-term or short-term in school, or out, we all had one. A Personal Legend, on the other hand, is a step deeper than the definition of a goal. A Personal Legend is a life journey one desires to accomplish. When accomplishing the Personal Legend, people commonly think about the destination, and the overall product. As a matter of fact, people gain much more from the journey took in order to be able to attain the goal. Throughout one’s journey to seek their Personal Legend, they learn and notice more about the world around them. This way, the journey is much more valuable than the destination itself. In the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Walter learns that it is better for him to live outside of what is his personal comfort zone. Throughout his journey he learns how to feel, and become a better person, which did also adapt his way of living and understanding. Throughout Santiago’s Personal Legend from the book, The Alchemist, he learns about the soul of the world, true love, and how the journey is much more important than his treasure. Because of this, Santiago changes his own way of living, with a deeper understanding of what is around him. Both of the characters have gained a lot of information throughout their expeditions, realizing that the outcome wasn’t as important as it seemed. Walter, for instance, gained a great deal of information

Mann, A. (1982). TAKING CARE OF WALTER MITTY. Studies in Short Fiction, 19(4), 351. Retrieved from

Mrs.Mitty drives Walter insane and triggers his dreams. Walter can not stand his wife and in response ignores her through his fantasies. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Mrs.Mitty finds Walter in the hotel lobby in a daze while reading a news paper and ask him “Why do you have to hide in this old chair?”(Thurber 47). Walter without realizing has once again found himself in a dream.

Why would Walter want to marry a woman like his wife in the first place? Besides the fact that they are completely different in the way they think, they process information different as well. For example, the short story tells all of Walter’s random imaginations and how he is always forgetting what people tell him. When the narrator says “Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get.” (3) lets the readers see that while Walter is very creative and never forgets what he imagines, he is forgetful of the world around him. On the other hand, Mrs. Mitty is aggravated about everything when she talks to Walter. One can conclude this due to her aging and being married to Walter for so long or some may even say long enough. Mrs. Mitty is worried and thinks that there is something seriously wrong with Walter. The Reader can see