The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

In the story's opening, Walter Mitty is driving in the car with his wife but daydreaming about being a Navy commander flying through a dangerous storm in a "SN202" with an admiring and devoted...

If there’s one thing Walter Mitty enjoys, it’s a good daydream. His fate, however, is seemingly to never be left alone to enjoy them. When one looks at the dullness of his life and the ways in...

I believe that there are two possible answers to this question. One answer focuses on the more immediate question of what causes or triggers each imaginary fantasy, and the other answer looks...

In the story, the main conflict is between Walter Mitty and his wife. This is because the entire story consists of Walter's desperate attempts to break free from his wife's control. To make his...

Walter's wife, known in the story as "Mrs. Mitty," treats Walter like an absent-minded child. She is overbearing, condescending, and critical towards Walter. But she is also Walter's link to the...

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", written by the great James Thurber for The New Yorker magazine, features an iconic daydreaming protagonist who imagines himself as several different characters....

James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," a tale of a mediocre man whose fantasy life impinges upon real life, abounds with certain literary devices. Mock Jargon Thurber makes...

Walter Mitty is an ordinary man with an overly active imagination. He constantly daydreams about something more exciting than his current situation. The entire story is about a trip into town....

Like many of his delusional daydreams, Walter Mitty’s courtroom dream was triggered by a specific series of events in combination. Driving his car above the speed limit set by his wife triggers his...

Author James Thurber is one of America’s cleverest humorists of the twentieth century. In 1939, he penned the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” for New Yorker magazine, and it promptly...

The real-life Walter Mitty seems to be diametrically opposed to his imaginary counterparts or alter egos, but by the end shows a few similarities. One way Walter differs from his imaginary...

“Round” characters in fiction are complex; “flat” characters are simple. “Dynamic” characters develop in some significant ways during the course of a work; “static” characters do not. Are the main...

Because Walter Mitty is so weak and hen-picked in his real life, he develops a fantasy world in which he is active and many times a hero. Putting himself in front of a firing squad would initially...

The “pocketa-pocketa” part of his dreams is Mitty’s way of imagining the sound certain things make—it’s the sound of engine of the hydroplane, or the sound of anaesthetizing machine, or the sound...

The climax of the story is when Walter Mitty stands up to his wife and, when she is haranguing him about putting on his overshoes, says, "I was thinking...Does it ever occur to you that I am...

James Thurber's short story about a mediocre man whose fantasy life impinges upon his real life is both humorous and tragic. Immediately in the exposition, the reader is immersed into the imaginary...

The resolution of James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" can be found in the final paragraph of the short story. It has been another routine day for Walter, driving his wife around and...

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In the story, and this includes Walter's daydreams, the author uses a third person narrator. Using this point of view, the narrator refers to each character as he, she, it, they, etc. "I" is used...

Walter's second daydream is triggered after he drives past a hospital. In the daydream, Walter is a specialist working with other doctors to save the life of Wellington McMillan, the millionaire...

Exposition is the information in a story that catches the reader up with what the characters know, or it can even give information that the characters don't know. It is everything the reader needs...

In all of Walter Mitty's daydreams he is playing an heroic leading role. It has been pointed out that the roles and settings are the kinds that would be found in popular fiction and Hollywood...

Walter Mitty's final daydream in which he is standing before a firing squad seems to reveal a secret death wish and to show that he is a very unhappy man. He dislikes himself, dislikes his nagging...

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" juxtaposes the extraordinary daydreams of its protagonist with the mundane realities of life. In his imagination, life is exciting,but in reality, it is boring....

In the opening sentences of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" there is a subtle foreshadowing of the very last scene of the story. The story opens abruptly: “We’re going through!” The Commander’s...

The main difference between the way Walter Mitty is treated in real life and the way he is treated in his daydreams and fantasies has to do with his wife. Mitty has very little interaction with...

Mood is an element within a piece of literature that creates feelings in the reader. Mood is different than tone because tone refers to the author's attitude toward a subject. Sometimes mood is...

Carl Jung, the famed psychoanalyst, coined the terms “introvert” and “extravert” in his brilliant book Psychological Types. Walter Mitty is obviously an introvert. According to Jung: The introvert...

The climax to this story isn't easily identified. I've read commentaries on this story that say the story doesn't have a climax. To some extent, that does make sense—the story weaves through...

Walter Mitty from the book The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a shy, introverted daydreamer. He is a character who is wrapped up in his own head and is therefore unable to properly interact with...

The theme of a work of literature can be defined as the message a reader might take away after reading the work. With this definition in mind, the theme of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" has to...

Using the vernacular of the time period in which Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" was written, Walter Mitty is a husband who is "hen-pecked." In contemporary times, Mitty would probably...

In his mind, Walter imagines that he is the most capable man in the world. In his real life, he is quite incompetent. One might think that, at least occasionally, Walter would try to be competent...

Mitty's last daydream is one where he is shot before a firing squad while he is smoking a cigarette. In this daydream he has the ultimate escape from his domineering wife-through his death. The...

The famous short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber tells of a man who has one amazing, adventurous, graphic fantasy after another while out on a shopping trip with his wife....

Walter Mitty’s life is a juxtaposition of boring normalcy and extraordinary fantasies. Mitty goes into his fantasies to escape the real world: he dreams of being a Captain, a Commander, a famous...

Walter Mitty is a man who is tired of the ordinary. He dreams of something more to life. His life has turned out to be a mundane kind of existence. His wife nags him all the time and the errands he...

There is a subtle linkage among Mitty's interactions with his wife, the police officer, and the parking-lot attendant. It has to do with gloves. When Mitty is letting his wife off in front of the...

Walter Mitty's ordinary, workaday life is none too exciting. It's not surprising, then, that he wants to create, and retreat into, his own little fantasy world. In his fantasies he's everything he...

First, we have to identify Mitty's last daydream. At the very end of the story, after an unpleasant encounter with his wife, Mitty has the fantasy of being in front of a firing squad about to be...

Mitty's second daydream begins when he drives past a hospital after dropping his wife at the beauty shop. His brilliant medical career ends when the parking lot attendant yells at him to "Back it...

In the short story, Walter Mitty does not actually take any direct action comparable to his daydreams. Instead, he is inspired by a general desire for adventure and danger, and the various things...

Mrs. Mitty does not explicitly express her feelings towards Walter, but she demonstrates no respect for her husband, trivializing whatever he says. Moreover, she seems to treat him as though he...

James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" presents a story in which fantasy intrudes upon the boundaries of reality in an episodic fashion. The reader can delight in Mitty's creative...

Being a henpecked husband and dissatisfied with his own real life, it is humorous to see how dashing and heroic Walter Mitty becomes in his daydreams. He manages to escape all of his troubles (and...

The story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" begins in the middle of his daydream. Readers are not introduced to Walter Mitty. We are introduced to the Commander. He is a brave and fearless leader...

James Thurber uses many made-up words in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," but only two or three seem to qualify as examples of onomatopoeia, which is the creation of words that imitate natural...

Walter Mitty's last daydream is of his bravely facing the firing squad. He scorns the blindfold, takes a last drag on his cigarette, and bears his breast to the bullets. Prior to this, Walter had...

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is a short story with an unusual narrative progression. It features a hen-picked protagonist who, while demure and nervous in his day-to-day life, finds himself...

This is a great question to think about. Overtly, these two excellent short stories have little in common, but if I were you, I would try to think through comparing how dreams and the imagination...