The Role of Fantasy in James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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The Role of Fantasy in James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

In "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," James Thurber tells the story of a henpecked old man who escapes his monotonous life with frequent excursions to fantasy. In the real world, he is a forgetful old man who must obey his wife's every whim. But, in his fantasies, Walter Mitty is intelligent, brave, and the epitome of manliness. He makes up for the characteristics he lacks in the real world through the heroic characters he embodies in his fantasies. Eventually, the story leads to Walter's death-a brave, heroic death in his fantasy world.

Because the story opens in Mitty's fantasy world with no explanation that it is imagination, we assume that Walter Mitty is the man we are first introduced to: an old commander who is powering his ship through a hurricane. His crew fondly says of him, "The Old Man ain't afraid of Hell!" (565). He's tough, fearless, and holds the respect of his crew. But when his wife hollers, "Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" she brings him back to reality and we realize for the first time that Walter Mitty is just a daydreaming old man, not a fierce mariner (565). In the fantasy, he was commanding an entire ship, but in reality he cannot even decide how fast to drive. "You know I don't like to go more than forty," his wife continues to scold (565). He just sits and looks at her, then listens to her list of errands that she wants him to do, and begins driving around aimlessly, just killing time in his boring, ordinary existence.

As Walter drives by the hospital, he flashes back into fantasy and we are introduced to the intelligent, well educated Dr. Walter Mitty. After they are called over the intercom, Dr. Pritchard-Mitford co...

... middle of paper ...

...n die like a hero in his fantasies.

The execution at the end of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" leaves us wondering whether Mitty is really dead or if his fantasy execution was completely unrelated to his real life. Either way, we know that he was never able to be the manly, heroic man that he wished to be in real life. Walter Mitty, throughout the story, escaped his inadequacies by escaping to fantasies which his mind had created. But, in the end, no matter how brave he was in his fantasy world, he could not be what he wanted to be in the real world. James Thurber's story shows us an excellent example of how a mind can cope with a monotonous, unexciting existence by the invention of fantasies.

Works Cited

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” 1942. 21 Great Stories. Ed. Abraham H.Lass and Norma L. Tasman. New York: Mentor, 1969. 272-277.

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