The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty: Movie Analysis

Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy isn’t about whether or not to commit suicide - rather, it is talking about two different alternatives a person can use to approach a situation. One is “To be”: upholding a passive fortitude and enduring reality. Its alternative is “Not to be”: taking arms, taking action and fighting against the troubles weighing you down. The soliloquy is the contemplation everyone makes when presented with a choice - whether to act, or not to act. Several factors impact how a person perceives their troubles and how they respond to them. However, one of the largest factors that measures a person’s response can be alluded to their societal influences, and their actions can be explained, even predicted, through a

His reasons for inaction are tied down to his job, as shown by one of his hallucinations. Walter spaces out and hallucinates himself talking back at Hendricks in the elevator scene, with two other co-workers accompanying him laughing at Hendricks’ disgruntled reaction. However, he later snaps out of his hallucination, only to see that his boss was looking at him funny for blanking out. Had Walter actually talked back, he runs the risk of losing his job as the negative assets manager at Life Magazine, thus keeping him tied down as a submissive employee. It’s mentioned in the movie that Walter, in the long time that he’s worked at the Life Magazine, he’s never had a failure before. It wouldn’t be surprising that Walter would prefer to keep his good streak that way, thus accepting to stay as an “inactive” character. His character at the start of the movie demonstrates that Walter is a person who is more aware of the reactions of people around him and is more worried about consequences - an instrumental social action character. Despite his longing to fight back against Hendricks and other co-workers in his hallucinations, he remains submissive and compliant in order to keep his job as the negatives manager. However, Walter’s status as an “inactive” character changes shortly after Life Magazine announces that it will be releasing its final issue and shutting down. With this sense of finality to his job, and the fact that his perfect streak is threatened due to the missing negative sent by his co-worker, Walter’s character transforms into an inactive member to one who takes action, going from a instrumental character to a rational-value character. Despite earlier expressing his doubts about boarding the helicopter and flying off to the middle of the sea, after seeing a hallucination of his crush, Cheryl,