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Walter Mitty

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Walter Mitty is a renowned surgeon, grizzled army sergeant, and deadly assassin that, in his words, could kill a man with any known make of gun from three hundred feet out with his left hand. He commands respect wherever he goes. The only catch is that this is all in his head. Walter Mitty is abnormally average and lackluster, but his daydreams transform the world around him into exciting scenes straight from a blockbuster movie. Walter views his own wife as a distraction from his beloved daydreams, and he has disdain for all of the other equally average people around him in his daily life. To escape from this monotony he pretends to be various people worthy of respect, and tends to disobey or rebel in small ways in order to quietly rebel. …show more content…

First off is Walter’s obvious contempt for his wife. Throughout the story he never once refers to his wife with any sort of joy, and seems to view her as an obstacle. The first time we are introduced to her is when she is scolding Mitty during one of his daydreams, and he describes her as looking “grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman had yelled at him in a crowd.” (Thurber 323) This portion of the story highlights the disparity between his real life and his fantasy world. In this particular fantasy world he is referred to as “The Old Man”, a one-eyed commander of a Navy hydroplane with a who isn’t afraid of anything and bravely leads his crew. In the real world he isn’t even allowed to drive over forty miles per …show more content…

Throughout the story he does not seem to enjoy interacting with the other people of the town, especially his own wife. For example, near the end of the story his wife says she will be gone a minute, an obvious figure of speech, and Mitty chastises her for being more than a minute. His wife is the only person in the story that he has the courage to talk back to, and when he does it is still in very weak and unsure ways quite unlike the cock-sure persona of his characters. When he interacts with the attendant he is quite nonconfrontational and almost avoids conflict, not saying more than muttering “Gee,” Or “Oh.” However, once he walks away the story says, “They’re so damn cock, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything.” He then describes a time that he tried to take his chains off and managed to get them wound up around the axles, and a grinning garageman had to help him. To any other person this would probably seem like a kind act, something to be thankful for. Not Mitty. He thinks about wearing his arm in a sling the next time so that in order to make them think he didn’t cause the blunder himself, thinking that that will take the grin off the garageman’s face. He interprets the grin as being of condescension. Instead of just assuming that the man was happy to help, he assumed that the man was smiling because he found his

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