Dreams and Reality in Walter Mitty's Life

The short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber is about a man named Walter Mitty. Walter Mitty has a wife and they are an older couple. Walter Mitty is known to daydream often. Walter is stubborn and often is forgetful. The plot takes place when he goes to run errands with his wife in the city on a normal day. Walter Mitty’s dreams usually a more creative version of what he is doing in reality. Mitty’s strength is that he dreams about things he thinks he can do because he has a large imagination and he thinks he can do anything. Examples of this include dreaming about being in a submarine during a bad storm and participated in a current trail.
Walter Mitty dreams crazy dreams, that could not be possible for him to do.

In the beginning of the short story, Walter is in a submarine in the ocean. He is in a stressful hurricane. In reality Mitty is driving in a car with is wife to run errands for the day. “ ‘We’re going through!’ The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking” (Thurber). In this quote the Commander is telling the shipmates that they are going through the storm. The Commander’s voice was cracking and sounded stressed. The Commander is directing everyone to do different tasks to make sure they get through the storm. Mitty himself says that the storm was increasing. This shows that Mitty has a large imagination because he is actually driving on a street but his large and creative imagination is letting him to believe he is in the ocean submarining through a hurricane. In this quote, Mitty’s escape shows that he is interested in current events and that he likes to put himself in current events. This impacts Walter because he has a better reason for going to the city with his wife for the day. Mitty’s dream do correlate with what he is doing in reality. Other times it is about what he is reading or watching others do.
Walter’s dreams are very different in subject.

It is obvious that his imagination has no limits. Walter had just purchased one of the items his wife told him to buy. While Mitty is trying to remember the other item that his wife asked him to buy, he hears a newsboy. The newsboy is shouting about the Waterbury Trial. Right then and there Walter has a dream about the trail. “ Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. ‘This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,’ he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom” (Thurber). In this quote, Walter is in a courtroom seeming to be the prosecutor. He is saying that he knows what gun the District Attorney is asking about. Walter Mitty is in the courtroom of the Waterbury Trial. It seems he is being interrogated by the District Attorney. Mitty is putting himself in the shoes of a criminal in a courtroom. In real life Walter is just walking down the street trying to figure out what his wife asked him to get. In this quote, Mitty’s escape shows that he is interested in current events and that he likes to put himself in current events. This impacts Mitty because he isn’t just sitting listen to a newsboy in the background, he is getting involved in others lives. Even a background noise can spark his imagination to form a dream. This makes him very aware of his

surroundings.