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The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty Essay

Decent Essays

Although Walter Mitty is sought to be an average, middle-aged man, he goes through periods of time escaping reality through fantasies. In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, James Thurber creates Walter as an insecure husband who is degraded by his own wife. Whenever Walter feels mortified and like a failure, he falls into deep fantasies where he is portrayed as a hero who always ends up saving the day. Through the depiction of elaborate fantasies, Thurber reveals how escaping reality allows Mitty to combat the adequacy he feels in his real life. One of the major reasons Walter Mitty has severe daydreams is because his wife degrades everything he does. An example of this is: “We’ve been all through that. You’re not a young man anymore. Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” (Thurber, 4). Whether it be telling him what he needs to get done or telling him what to do, she treats him like a child and not her husband. Because of this, Walter has daydreams about major occupations, such as being a surgeon or hero saving people’s lives. He wants …show more content…

In order for him to be confident in himself, he has daydreams about saving lives, being a person people look up to or even dying a legend. Additionally, Walter forgets things easily, cannot handle simple tasks and is not a very good driver. This causes him to have fantasies of his weaknesses being his strengths. For example, his wife always criticizes his driving, so he dreams about being a Navy hydroplane pilot during a storm, along with commanding and flying a plane during war. “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for? You were up to fifty-five. You know I don’t like going more than forty. You were going fifty-five” (Thurber, 2). He also has dreams about being a world-famous surgeon saving high-ranked individuals when he is feeling low and

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