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The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty Essay

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“I try to live instinctively. And I guess I've always enjoyed living in a fantasy world, daydreaming,” is what American actor, James Duval, once said. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, a middle-aged man who lives a boring life retreats to his imagination which allows him to experience glory and success. Thurber uses third person limited omniscient to portray Mitty in a way that shows the oppression and disappointment nearly all humans feel at some point in their lives, validating that fantasies can be used to cope with reality. The point of view characterizes Mitty into two personalities, those being reality and fictional. Walter Mitty is shown to be naive and forgetful. For instance, “...he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then (Thurber 3). As can be determined, Mitty is embarrassed by not being able to remove tire chains, thinking that if he were to look injured, he would be able to get away with it. This is further contrasted by his third day dream where he explodes his attorney's alibi that Mitty “...wore his right arm in a sling” the night of the murder (Thurber 3). Mitty even …show more content…

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was written from the third person limited omniscient point of view. However, many of the events are filtered through Mitty’s eyes. The contrast between his character in reality and daydreams shows a method of hiding from reality. He gets triggered by something in reality which then causes a dream based off of the trigger. It seems that whenever possible, he delves deep into his dreams, leading to five dreams in only a five-page short story. Life is full of highs and lows, and there are many ways to cope with the lows. Thurber is illustrating a way to deal with the struggles of life through the character of Walter Mitty, whose method is to

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