Similarities Between The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, both novel and movie, the impossible
becomes possible as reality bends. Since the story and the film take place in two different time periods Walter’s daydreams are bent into different periods and twisted in different ways. The plots of Walter Mitty’s life in 1939 compared to his life in 2013 are very different, but it’s his character to start off with and his dreams in which we find similarities.

Walter Mitty’s daydreams start off in differently in the novel and the movie. In the novel, the topics of his dreams derive from seeing a hospital and he becomes a doctor or his feelings of being completely ready to die, which he is then facing a firing squad. His dreams don’t involve the place he’s currently in since he is driving in his car when he becomes an amazing doctor at a hospital. Walter’s dreams, however, do reflect him always being a hero, except the last one. In the film, Walter’s daydreams start off from where he is at the current moment. This is shown in the scene when Walter saves his dream girl’s dog, the dream starts off from where he’s standing on the train platform.

In both the novel and the film, Mitty is not treated well at all because of his problem as a maladaptive daydreamer.

Walter starts off daydreaming in the novel only to be woken from this state by a shocked and somewhat angry wife. His wife being mad at him because he started daydreaming while he was driving. Mrs. Mitty isn’t at all secretive that she doesn’t like her husband very much, let alone his habit of going into his own little world. As well as the novel, Walter is made fun of for his daydreaming by his co-workers in the movie. His new co-worker Ted especially picks on him, he calls Walter, “Major Tom”, relating to the song “Space Oddity” by David Bowie. Tom even goes so far as to throw a paper clip at Walter when he’s daydreaming to see if he’ll even

flinch.

As both plots unfold, Walter’s daydreaming frequency changes with his level of self confidence and daily activities. Walter Mitty’s daydreams are frequent throughout the story and they go from one to another seeing as his confidence level remains extremely low as well as his sadness. Mitty’s dream of him being a captain is disrupted only briefly by his wife, then he goes on to a new dream topic of him facing death by the firing squad. In the movie, Mitty has dream about the girl of his dreams singing “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, which is his last daydream for a while. As Walter Mitty travels to different places and does more things, he becomes more confident and his daydreaming dies down. However, when he sees his dream girl is back together with her husband, his confidence drops and his sadness rises. He then goes on to have a daydreaming episode immediately after in a cab on his way home.

Walter Mitty’s characters both are majorly lacking in self confidence and have signs that point to the fact that Walter may be struggling with depression issues. These two factors are major points in Mitty having these daydreaming episodes. For such a sad topic, the director was right to make the movie more light hearted and comedic than the original story. The original story was an amazing series of events on James Thurber’s part, but it’s always nice to have a happy ending.