The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: The Downside of Walter Mitty's Imagination

...

his somewhat odd actions, he gets criticized, no matter the importance of what he says or performs. Since Mitty stands out from the normal crowd of people, he is seen as an outsider and tends to take the punishment from time to time, in the form of others poorly judging him without giving a second chance at redemption. Additionally, to illustrate how Mitty’s wife, Mrs. Mitty, believes that her husband’s frequent daydreaming is some kind of mental illness and not just his imagination, she tells him,“It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over” (33). Mrs. Mitty disliked how her husband appears to fade into and out of reality because it makes her look like she is just as odd as him when seen by other people. It seems as if Walter Mitty is not happily married to his wife, as she frequently mistreats him to the point of punishing him for what she considers his “illness,” but the punishments are vague, like how she makes decisions for both of them without asking for approval from her husband, as displayed by telling him what to accomplish in the day. In conclusion, Mitty’s life is a continuous cycle of living an ordinary life with the added amount of his incompetence, criticisms for his actions, and the woman he is married to poorly treating him. In Thurber’s story, it is very clear that Walter Mitty stands out among the rest, so he gets hammered the hardest.

Works Cited

Thurber, James “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Imprints 11. Ed. Dom Saliani et al. Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Company, 2001. 33-37. Print.