Biography of James Thurber
On December 8, 1894 Charles L. Thurber and Mary Agnes Fisher Thurber had a child. His name was James Thurber. Thurber would grow up to become a world known humorist writer. Thurber’s father was a civil clerk and his mother had no job but was said to have been an eccentric woman. Thurber once said when he was eighty, “she never stopped performing and she always played pranks on friends and relatives” (Hayes 56: 156).
Born in Columbus, Ohio Thurber was limited to focus on expanding his creativity as a child as a childhood injury would prevent him from ever playing sports (Heller 6: 2326-2331). When Thurber was eight he was playing a game called William tell with his two brothers, William and Robert, when his left eye was pierced with an arrow. This caused him to lose his eye, and eventually he would go almost completely blind.
In 1913 Thurber attended Ohio state university. While in college, he was a part of the phi kappa psi fraternity. While in this, he rented a house on 77 Jefferson Avenue. In 1984 this would become the Thurber house, a historical museum. Thurber did not graduate from Ohio State because he could not pass the ROTC course due to the vision of his eye. Later in his life he was awarded an honorary degree (Thurberhouse.org)
After college Thurber worked as a journalist in Columbus Ohio. While in Ohio he “absorbed the Midwestern regional values which remained important to him all of his life” (Heller 6: 2327). In 1922 Thurber married Althea Adams. In 1931 Thurber and his wife had their only child, a daughter named rosemary. After years of fighting Thurber and his wife got a divorce. Only a few months later Thurber remarried Helen Wismar.
In 1926 Thurber and Althea moved to New York so Thurb...
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...ith in their everyday life. Thurber is an amazing writer and finds ways to bring very unique stories to life.
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Works Cited
"Disillusion, Defiance, and Discontent." Prentice Hall Literature. Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. 706+. Print.
FLANAGAN, DENNIS. "You Can Look It Up." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Mar. 1991. Web. 11 May 2014.
Hayes, Dwayne D. "James Thurber." Authors & Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 56. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2004. 155-68. Print.
Magill, Frank N. "James Thurber." Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Vol. 6. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1981. 2326-331. Print.
Thurber, James, and Sandra Higashi. The Night the Ghost Got in. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 1983. Print.
Thurber, James. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. New York: New Yorker, 1939. Print.
Fromm, Erich. "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem." Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Custom, 2009. 258-63. Print.
...s, his son Thomas, General Josiah T. Walls. He then spent time in the Sentinel office (newspaper) learning about trades and printing, and the publisher became his friend. His first death in his family occurred, and it was mother at the age of thirty-six. His mother continuously had anxieties about worrying about people coming to kill her family, but the cause of her death is still unknown. According to the book, ultimately, Tim was very distraught about his mother’s death. His father eventually dies in 1897, but he accomplished several things before his death: became “city marshal, county commisioner of Duval County, and clerk of the city market.”
On October 4th 1822, Sophie Bichard Hayes gave birth to Rutherford Bichard Hayes. His father Rutherford Hayes passed away two months prior to Rutherford Jr. being born. Along with his 4 other siblings, Rutherford was raised in Ohio by his mother for most of his life. Rutherford went to school in Norwalk, Ohio and Middletown, Connecticut. In 1842 he graduated from Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, valedictorian of his class. After a year of study in a Columbus law office, he entered Harvard Law School and received his degree in 1845. Hayes began his practice in a small town called Lower Sandusky. Not finding many opportunities here, he left for Cincinnati in 1849 where he became a successful lawyer.
If James Thurber wanted to create a character that bled the epitome of deception, it would undoubtedly be the protagonist of his short story, “The Catbird Seat”, Erwin Martin. Set in the 1940’s, with political instability from the Second World War and recovering from the detrimental Great Depression, Mr. Martin’s ostensible meekness and dullness builds his reputation amongst his colleagues and superiors as the ideal employee, lacking imperfections, and perhaps relates to the mentality those possessed at that time period. It is through Mr. Martin’s solidified image of rectitude that he is able to exploit these circumstances and surreptitiously plan his ploy against his nemesis, Mrs. Barrows, with his perfectly established mental simulacrum amongst
Baym, N. (2008). Cotton mather. In N. Baym (Ed.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume 1 (p. 143). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Fromm, Erich. “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahy and Christine R. Farris. New York, New York: Pearson, 2009. 258-263. Print.
After five years of editing and being a theater critic in 1847 she was ready to start a new chapter in her life. So she ended up retiring to get married. When she retired on September 1st, 1847 the owners wrote in the Boston Transcript “The experiment of placing a lady as the responsible editor of a Paper was a new and doubtful one. It was a bold step on her part to undertake so much labor and responsibility. She made the trial with fear and trembling, and her success has been triumphant. The task had never been undertaken in this or any other country, to the knowledge of the publishers, by one of her sex; it was consequently the more trying, and her victory the more brilliant.” Cornelia Walter got married to a man named William Boardman Richard on September 22, 1827. Her husband was an iron and steel dealer in Boston. She had a daughter named Annie who died at three years old, twins William and Walter Boardman born in 1853, died at six months. It’s unknown on why or how her three kids died. It’s also said that she had a fourth child who was a girl named Elise Boardman born in 1848 and survived then put up for
After high school he attended Pennsylvania State College for Pre-law from 1896 to 1898, then later attended Columbia Law School from 1898-1901. After graduating he became a lawyer at the age of 22. He lived during an interesting time he missed both world wars, the first one because of his wealth, and the second one because he was too old. He would have been eligible to take part in the first world war, just barely but would have been eligible.
Evans, Robert C., Anne C. Little, and Barbara Wiedemann. Short Fiction: A Critical Companion. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1997. 265-270.
Howell was originally raised in New Jersey. At age 13, Howell and his family moved to New Mexico. In 1964, Howell attended Yale University where he studied art history, modern French and Spanish literature. But later in Howell's college years, he started going to New York City's jazz clubs. In 1967, Howell dropped out of Yale University.
James Thurber was a rare gem in the treasure chest of authors, one who could skillfully adapt his work to the changing world around him. Aiming at the problems of everyday life, Thurber tackled many of them with great humor and wit. The talented writer and cartoonist brought forth a plethora of fine works from his early writing days at the New Yorker all the way up to the days preceding his death on November 2, 1961, a result of contracting pneumonia while recovering from a stroke. James Thurber was, from the works he produced throughout his life, a genuine source of laughter for the common man.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
The short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” the author, James Thurber, tells a tale of the eponymous character, Walter Mitty, and his numerous daydreams. Throughout the story, the various lives led by Walter are interrupted by his unnamed wife. By examining Thurber’s tale, there is a single conclusion that can be reached about the relationship between Walter and his wife. In general, it can be assumed that the both of them are mutually disappointed with their current predicament, however, despite their disappointment, they intend to keep their relationship working. This is shown in several ways, one way being the title itself, in which his fantasies are secrets, another being the five interactions between Mr. and Mrs. Mitty wherein she
Thoreau, H.D. “Civil Disobedience.” A world of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writer. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. Boston. Bedford/St. Martins, 2010.173-199.
The act of rebelling is a trait engrained in humans that it is prevalent within babies, children, teenagers, and adults. This of course has led it to become a recurrent way throughout human history to go against the status quo, and Oscar Wilde proclaims that disobedience promotes progress. The extent to which this remains true is only when suppressed ideas and oppressed people need liberation through rebellion. When disobedience is used to cling onto antiquated ideas, to resist progress, that is when it becomes a force of regression. Examples of this are plentiful throughout history and the numerous conflicts which have transpired as a result of it.