When analyzing a short story there are many criteria that define a well written piece of literature. The first attribute of a skillfully crafted piece of literature is an ambiguous story development. The ability of an author to create a story that has an unforeseen outcome allows for the readers to continue to engage with the text. Secondly, a story must have a plausible meaning. This is crucial towards the reader’s ability to relate and connect to the story’s theme. If the story’s theme isn’t believable, the readers won’t be able to understand the deeper message of what the author is trying to convey. Finally, a well-written story must be concise. The longer it takes for the audience to read a story, the easier it becomes for them to lose focus and miss the author’s message. All of these criteria are present in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and work together to create a well thought out short story.
He provides an intriguing story that while not spanning the length of a novel, sparks the interest of the reader by the first two paragraphs. The characters, conflict, and plot in Thurber’s story entertain the reader through the mysteriousness that surrounds their outcome. For the readers this mystery is engaging because it is not solved until the very end of the story. Likewise, the underlying message is almost not apparent until Thurber’s story ends and is analyzed. Only after delving deeper beneath the surface do we understand the meaning, the need to escape, and how it correlates to Walter Mitty’s life, Mitty’s mundane life requires that he withdrawal from reality to in order to have the life he truly desires. The ambiguous outcome of the story provides the mystery needed to keep the readers entertained and provide a well written literary piece of
In the story of Walter Mitty by James Thurber, Walter Mitty is a static character and in the movie Walter Mitty by Ben Stiller, Walter is made a dynamic character so that the movies is more exciting than the book. In the story Walter stays a boring character who doesn’t do much at all, while in the movie he becomes the adventurous character he has dreamed about. In the end of the story Walter was happy about “facing the firing squad”. Since Walter never had the life he wanted he just wanted to die, unlike the movie where he had done so many things that he got himself a date when he was the most happy. In the story Walter kept dreaming throughout the day being triggered by little things to go off into his own world, but in the movie Walter
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
Edith Wharton’s brief, yet tragic novella, Ethan Frome, presents a crippled and lonely man – Ethan Frome – who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a hypochondriacal wife, Zenobia “Zeena” Frome. Set during a harsh, “sluggish” winter in Starkfield, Massachusetts, Ethan and his sickly wife live in a dilapidated and “unusually forlorn and stunted” New-England farmhouse (Wharton 18). Due to Zeena’s numerous complications, they employ her cousin to help around the house, a vivacious young girl – Mattie Silver. With Mattie’s presence, Starkfield seems to emerge from its desolateness, and Ethan’s vacant world seems to be awoken from his discontented life and empty marriage. And so begins Ethan’s love adventure – a desperate desire to have Mattie as his own; however, his morals along with his duty to Zeena and his natural streak of honesty hinder him in his ability to realize his own dreams. Throughout this suspenseful and disastrous novella, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton effectively employs situational irony enabling readers to experience a sudden shock and an unexpected twist of events that ultimately lead to a final tragedy in a living nightmare.
In the short story, “ The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” written by James Thurber, it describes a man who while in the midst of everyday life, floats off into daydream that often cause him more trouble than it is worth. His wife, Mrs. Mitty, on the surface does not seem like a well-rounded character. It always seems her life’s mission is to demean Walter and to always use her overbearing nature to nag him. However, there may be more to this character than what meets the eye. I believe that Mrs. Mitty is actually a well-rounded character in the fact that she only acts the way she does only for her husband and his well-being.
“The Trusty” is a work of fiction, written by Ron Rash, that tells the story of a man and a woman who try to escape their lives. In this short story, Sinkler is depicted as a scandalous but also as a distressed character. Many painted events lead to the illustration of a peculiar setting in which Sinkler is experiencing some abnormal instances. Sinkler is not dead, and his characterization has lead the audience to believe his flawed mental state is the reason why.
That is why the distinction so frequently drawn between plot and story, fabula and sjuzhet, while handy, turns most provocative precisely when it cannot be made, when the temptation is there for us to make it as readers, when the way to do it seems at hand, but we are stopped ultimately from completing it. Too many Cliffs Notes to The Sound and the Fury have made modernist plot-story scramblings predictable, easy-to-read. But still we watch out for when the story turns out to be such that its arrangement prevents us from decrypting, excavating it. The end (the story) stymies the means (the plot) and vice versa.
to World War II as a pilot who saves his crew from a severe storm to
Life is about finding yourself, each other, and being true to one’s self. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an extremely original and creative story written by James Thurber. The movie, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, conveys a daydreamer escaping his typical life by disappearing into a realm of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. In both the movie and the book, the title character retreats into fantasy as an escape from his mundane reality because in the real world, he is ordinary, insecure, and passive. In the short story, Walter simply retreats into his daydreams and tolerates his domineering wife, while in the movie he actively pursues finding himself.
What would be the consequences of living vicariously through another person? The life of an individual who does not live every day to his or her fullest extent is a restricting one. Humorous author, James Thurber, in his short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” shares the tale of Walter Mitty, a man who lives an unhappy life in the city obeying his wife’s every wish and command, daydreams to escape the sad constricting reality of his life. In Ben Stiller’s story-based film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Walter Mitty takes real-life action to find love, adventure, and respect from a demeaning boss who takes the lead position of remodeling Life Magazine from a physical to an online magazine. Ben Stiller and James Thurber utilize allusion,
In conclusion, it is hard to grasp the true meaning of the story unless the story is read a second time because of the author's style of writing.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
...st or heart of the story is often compromised, losing the power to grip an audience with its strong emotional or tragic plot. Furthermore, in the
‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ is about a boring man who has a lot of daydreams. It was originally a short story by James Thurber, but was also made into a movie. The way that the story is presented in both is a key factor in either’s success, and when compared, the two are very different. For example, in the short story, Walter has little to no character development, but in the movie, nearly the entire production is him being put through a lot of situations that let us see more of the true character of Walter Mitty. This example and others is what makes the movie adaptation of ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ better than that of the short story.
Short fiction stories are short stories that are not real. These stories are made up in the minds of the writers of the stories. Each story will have literary devices throughout it to enhance the story. These enhance literature because without them in the story, the reader would not be able to visualize the story and understand it as well as the author would like for the reader to. Strong short stories should have several literary devices throughout them to help the reader completely grasp what the writer is trying to unveil. Dynamic character makes the story in Anton Checkov’s story “The Bear.” The setting is important in Shirley Jackson’s “Lottery” and theme is important in Guy De Maupassant’s “The Necklace”.
Phenomenology by its definition is: “the way in which one perceives and interprets events and one's relationship to them in contrast both to one's objective responses to stimuli and to any inferred unconscious motivation for one's behavior; also : a psychology based on the theory that phenomenology determines behavior” by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. While on the other hand: “Phenomenology studies structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world.” As defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.