Chapter no: 8
SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
(James Grover Thurber)
Birth: December 8, 1894 – Death:Novermber 2, 1961 (America)
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| SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY by James Grover Thurber (For ADP/B.Sc English Students ) |
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About the Author
James Thurber was an American humourist. Among his favourite subjects were dogs, dominating women and pathetic men. In his writings people and animals move with sad persistence through incredible upsets. They are the products of malignant fate which they stoically combat. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty develops two of Thurber’s favourite themes; Inhibition and the war between the males and females.
Detailed Summary
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is a story about a man who prefers to live in his fantasies rather than dealing with real life. The idea underlying the story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is female domination over man. Another main idea of the story is incompatibility of temper, which causes friction between the husband and the wife. This story is a psychological study of a mental wanderer.
It is the secret life of Walter Mitty who often goes to hallucination because of his some depressed dreams of life.
Walter Mitty:
Walter Mitty is a middle aged man and is somewhat abnormal person. His wife seems to be perfectly normal. He often indulges in hallucinations. He is a prey to the fits of day dreaming , which are the results of some mental disorder or unfulfilled desires. Mitty a Representative of Mechanical Age It presumably a study of modern man under industrial pressures, stresses and strains. It is characterized under the name of Walter Mitty. He may be any person in the most developed Western country, undergoing the mechanical life without any recreation. Industrial atmosphere has robbed of their mental equilibrium. They are also deprived of mental peace.
The life is always under stresses and strains. They have become a slave of material prosperity. For this purpose they are paying the price of mental health. His first fit of hallucination is the result of his past unfulfilled desires. He desired to become a commander of Navy hydroplane. In his hallucination as a commander, he issued orders to his crew to combat the hurricane in which they were stuck up. The reasons of his joining and leaving Navy are not known.
Different Imaginary Roles of Mitty
He wanted then to forget all about his naval command and took shelter in a resort to a leisurely drive with his wife in his car. At that juncture another fit of hallucination seized him.
a. Role of Specialist Doctor
He imagined himself as a specialist doctor operating on a diseased millionaire banker. It became a crucial situation when the anesthetizer and other doctors failed and nurses slipped away. He rose to the occasion single handedly.
b. Role of Car driver
In strong and intense mental wanderings he unconsciously drove his car on the wrong lane, marked “Exit Only”. The attendant took it his duty to back the car at the right parking place. It happened because of intense mental condition. Then he began looking for a shoe store to purchase over shoes to avoid his nagging wife. After Walter Mitty had got over shoes, he failed to remember to buy other things. He tried to recollect certain items as “Kleenex” (a tissue paper, Squibb’s, razor blades, tooth brush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative, referendum or what else? He could not pinpoint the items, he was asked to purchase twice by his wife. As he is mentally lost and confused.
c. Role in a Court facing trial
Then he had another hallucination. Thoughts of his assassinating a person named Gregory Fitzhurst began crowding in his mind. He was in a doldrums whether he should continue shopping or go to his court trail in the town of Waterbury. He positively decided to go to the court trail and confess his crime of killing a man deliberately. On the road again, he began to learn something loudly by roat, by saying “puppy biscuits”,so loudly to himself. A passing woman hear it and said to her companion, “that man said “Puppy biscuits” to himself. He went into a smaller A & P grocery shop in the street, and said to him to give him the brand of biscuits on whose box was written “Puppies bark for this biscuits.”
d. Role in the Hotel
In the lobby of a hotel, Walter Mitty remained there waiting for his wife. In the meantime, sitting in a big leather chair, he picked up a book named “Liberty” written by John Stuart Mill. He noticed some photographs of bombing planes and of ruined streets. He picked up the hint of war and went into another hallucination. He was a captain in the war, against the Germans. He wanted to stop the heavy artillery attack of the Germans, and turn the German ammunition into a dump by piloting the bomber plane. Before alighting a bomber, he wanted to gulp down some brandy. He poured out brandy into two glasses, one for himself and one for his sergeant, while the war was at its maximum targets. Walter Mitty sipped another glass of brandy. In the meanwhile, the pounding of cannon and the shooting of the flame thowers increased. He went to his dugout and began thinking of his beloved and hummed the French song “Aupres da ma blonde”.
Then he came back from the war and physically to the hotel. Soon his wife arrived there ever reprimanding him, “Why did you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you? Does it ever occur to you that I am also sometimes thinking?
Final Role
Then he managed to control himself and lighted a cigarette and he took one last puff on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then he fell into another fit of hallucination and found himself stood before German firing squad. In that way, Walter Mitty proves an undefeated and inscrutable personality to the last. He was rather unintelligible with his complexity of personality, and nobody could understand him.
