Comparing Secret Life Of Walter Mity And Mirror Image

Sandesh Jagessar

Mrs. Rochester

ENG 3U1.20

September 28, 2015

Faces

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”(Oscar Wilde). In James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Walter Mitty proves to be an inept man, lost in his own mind where he eludes himself from the real world and enrolls several different identities. As a result of his daydreaming, Mitty proves that his natural identity is diverse and composes all of the characters he imagines. In contrast to Lena Coakley’s “Mirror Image”, a teenage girl name Alice has a brain transplant and has to adjust to her new life in a different body. In spite of that, she struggles to decide if is she is still herself. Overall, both authors

illustrate how one can learn to accept ones identity after experiencing someone else’s.
It is evident in “The Secret life of Walter Mitty” and “Mirror Image” that conflict contributes to Walter Mitty and Alice learning to accept the identity that they embody. In the secret life of Walter Mitty, the story beings with Walter personifying the position of a navy commander, piloting his team through a vigorous storm, but his daydreaming gets away from him and he starts speeding. Walter’s wife then exclaims “You were up to fifty-five. […] You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five. […] You're tensed up again…. […] It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over." (3). Despite, Walter Mitty being an aging man he’s still got and active imagination and his wife does not seem to understand that this is all part of his identity. Walter wants his wife to accept him for who he is. Alice however, does not imagine being someone else, she is instead physically transfers into another body, through a brain transplant. Before the operation Alice has a close relationship with her Sister Jenny, but jenny feels that Alice is no longer herself after the recovery from the operation and says” I have to get to know you better”(Coakley). Jenny sees Alice as Gail; the girls of the body that Alice’s brain transfers to, this provokes Alice to question what side of her is true. In comparison, Walter Mitty and Alice are both character that enroll themselves into another identity in order to gain acceptance of who they are. However Alice only does so because she is uncertain if she can ever retain her old self and during her teenage years things only seem worse.
Another reason both characters learn to accept who they are is because of the effect their setting has upon them.

Walter Mitty lives in the era of world war two, this was a time of danger sickness, gangs and drug dealing. This is why Walter imagines being in the navy, being a surgeon saving the life of a V.I.P and being a crack shot that is cross examine on trial. When Walter hears a newsboy shouting about a trial he envisions himself on trial as a skilled marksman, who is cross examine on the count of murder. In the dream the judge asks Mitty if the weapon is his and Mitty replies by saying “this is my Webley-Vickers 50.80” (Thurber). Clearly, the setting that Walter Mitty lives in influences the way he daydreams and overall impacts the identities he chooses. Alice is in her teen hood where teenagers try to find out what identity suits them and will ultimately reflect upon them for their entire life. However Alice faces, the media who claim her to be “a new development in the story of girl x”. The controversy came up because Gail’s mother Mrs. Jarred believes that her daughter is still alive, she does not want to believe that her daughter is gone, thus putting more pressure on

Alice.
Last of all, the internal character that who Walter Mitty and Alice are proves to be too much to overcome while experiencing the identity of another.