James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Escaping Reality

In James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Walter Mitty faces the every day challenges of the real world. Thurber uses surreal dreams to allow Walter Mitty to escape these challenges. The main two characters are Mr. and Mrs. Mitty. Mr.Mitty finds himself in the middle of action packed dreams until someone or something brings him back to reality. Walter Mitty escapes through his fantasies because he lacks the strength to face reality and the courage to express his real feelings and opinions.

Walter Mitty uses his fantasies to avoid his wife. Ferguson points out that Mr.Mitty’s dreams usually occur during or after one of his dreams(433). Walter falls into his dreams to escape his wife even though sometimes he does not realize it. Ferguson further explains Walters flaws by explaining how he is to weak to stand up to his wife; therefore, using his dreams to escape his life with her(433). Walters wife is an obstacle that he learns to overcome with his dreams. Walters dreams allow him to avoid running errands with his wife. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Walter escapes the errand running with his wife by taking a drag of a cigarette and slowly falling into one of his fantasies(Thurber 47). This shows us that Walter could care less about running errands with his wife and uses his dream to get away. Walter is happier in his dreams than he would be running errands with his wife. Critics label Mrs. Mitty as a scape-goat which allows Walter to use Mrs.Mitty fall into his dreams(Cheatham 608). Walter uses Mrs.Mitty as a reason to be able to dream. Ferguson explains how Mrs. Mitty is the reason that Walter is driving into town in the first place; he has to wait outside the drugstore and in the hotel lobb...

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...Walter chooses to go back and forth between heroic fantasy and reality while using fantasy to escape the reality(2). Walter finds himself dreaming when he is not doing anything else. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Walter sits down after shopping for his wife in a hotel lobby; Walter picks up a newspaper and starts to read about “World Through the Air?” as he drifts into one of his dreams ( Thurber 46). Walter is done with his errands and has nothing to do, accordingly without realizing it falls into a dream. Thurber shows how Walter falls into dreams when he is bored, such as when Walter is smoking a cigarette while Mrs. Mitty is in the drug store and he slowly drifts into a dream (47). At this point in the story Walter realizes that he is falling into a one of his heroic action packed dreams and does nothing at all to stop it, it is his escape from boredom.