The secret life of walter mitty short story summary

See Plot Diagram

Summary

The Commander

The setting of the opening scene of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is aboard a Navy hydroplane (seaplane), where the commander has just announced that he will safely steer his crew through an impending hurricane. He orders the crew to rev up the engines. As the pounding of the cylinders increases—"ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa"—crew members assure one another that "the Old Man" will indeed get them through the storm because he "ain't afraid of Hell."

Suddenly, a woman's voice cuts in: "You're driving too fast!" These are the words of Mrs. Walter Mitty, interrupting her husband's daydream. Walter Mitty has been fantasizing that he is the courageous commander of the hydroplane. In reality Mitty is driving his wife to Waterbury, Connecticut, so that she can get her hair done while he runs a few errands. On these weekly trips, Mitty breaks up the boring routine by daydreaming of fantastic adventures in which he is the main character.

Mitty pulls up in front of the hairdresser's shop, and his wife reminds him to pick up a pair of overshoes—rubber shoes worn over the shoes in bad weather—before she exits the car. When Mitty comments that he does not need the overshoes, his wife reminds him that he is no longer a young man. Her final instruction to him is to wear his gloves. Mitty obeys but then removes the gloves after he drives away. However, upon encountering a traffic officer, he puts them back on. As he heads toward the town parking lot, he passes the hospital, inspiring his next daydream.

Dr. Walter Mitty

Now he is Dr. Walter Mitty, and he has been called to consult on an emergency procedure. He fantasizes that Dr. Renshaw—the Mitty family's physician—tells him the patient is a millionaire banker who is a friend of President Roosevelt and is suffering from "obstreosis of the ductal tract." Two other specialists, Dr. Remington and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, arrive on the scene. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford congratulates Mitty on his book about "streptothricosis." All at once, a large machine—the hospital's new "anaesthetizer"—begins to malfunction. As the machine sputters—"pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep"—Dr. Walter Mitty springs into action. He asks for a fountain pen and pulls a faulty piston from the machine, pushing the pen into its place. It will hold the machine together only for 10 minutes, so they must operate now! Dr. Renshaw asks Mitty to take over, and Mitty slips on a surgical gown as the nurse hands him a shiny instrument.

All of a sudden, the parking lot attendant yells because Mitty has pulled into the wrong lane. He tells Mitty to get out of the car and let him park it. As Mitty walks away, he reflects on how "cocky" everyone is because they all think they can do things better. He recalls an incident when he tried to install chains on his tires and it went terribly wrong, and the garageman had grinned at Mitty while he untangled the chains. Mitty figures that if the next time he goes to the garage wearing his right arm in a sling, perhaps the man won't grin.

After picking up his overshoes, Mitty tries to remember what other items his wife told to pick up. He hates these trips to town because there is always something he forgets to get. While he is refreshing his memory, a newsboy runs by yelling about a local trial that is taking place, plunging Mitty into his next reverie.

The Defendant

Walter Mitty is sitting on the witness stand on trial for murder. The district attorney hands Mitty a pistol to help refresh his memory. Coolly, Mitty identifies the handgun as his own "Webley-Vickers 50.80." The district attorney asks Mitty if he is a crack shot with any firearm. This raises an objection from Mitty's defense attorney. He points out that Mitty's right arm was in a sling on the night when the shooting took place. Mitty raises his hand to quiet the courtroom and declares that he could have easily killed the victim from 300 feet away using only his left hand. Chaos erupts, and a lovely, distraught woman rushes to hug Mitty. The district attorney strikes the woman, and Mitty responds by punching the man. He calls the district attorney a "miserable cur."

"Puppy biscuits," says Walter Mitty, suddenly remembering another item on his wife's shopping list. Snapping back to reality, he heads down the street to the smaller A&P supermarket to buy some.

After making his purchase, Walter Mitty goes to the hotel to wait for his wife. He settles into a big, comfortable chair with his overshoes and dog biscuits on the floor beside him. He chooses a copy of an old Liberty magazine and begins reading an article titled "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" As Walter Mitty views the photographs of bombing planes and ruined streets that accompany the article, another fantasy begins to take shape in his mind.

Captain Walter Mitty

The sergeant enters the airbase dugout with a disabled airman named Raleigh. Outside, the Germans are shelling the base. Captain Walter Mitty tells the sergeant to put Raleigh to bed and that he will fly the bomber alone. The sergeant protests; the design of the bomber calls for two airmen to handle it, not one, and the German antiaircraft fire is deadly. Still, Captain Mitty insists that "someone's got to get that ammunition dump" and then offers his sergeant some brandy.

While Mitty and the sergeant drink, artillery pounds the airbase. Captain Mitty tosses off several more brandies, much to the admiration of his sergeant. Then he straps on his Webley-Vickers automatic, while the machine guns outside rattle and one can hear the "pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" of the new flamethrowers. As Captain Mitty waves to the sergeant from the door, Walter Mitty is struck on the shoulder by his wife.

Mrs. Mitty is angry that she couldn't see Walter in the big chair. She asks if he got the puppy biscuits and demands to know why he didn't put his overshoes on in the shoe store. Mitty asks if it ever occurs to her that he is thinking, a notion that causes his wife to think he is unwell.

The Condemned Prisoner

The Mittys exit the hotel, and as they pass the drugstore, Mrs. Mitty suddenly remembers something she forgot to buy. She tells Walter she'll be back in a minute. She is gone longer, so Mitty lights a cigarette. Rain and sleet begin to come down, and Mitty stands smoking with his back to the drugstore wall. He soon flicks the cigarette aside, and with "a fleeting smile" he begins to fantasize that he is facing a firing squad. He stands proud, disdainful, undefeated, and "inscrutable to the last."

Analysis

Inscrutable Walter Mitty

James Thurber's lively character Walter Mitty has become closely identified with the everyday, ordinary person who daydreams to escape the dull routine of a modern world, so much so that people call similar dreamers "Walter Mitty characters" or simply "Walter Mittys." As much fun as Mitty's adventures provide the reader, however, Walter Mitty himself is a mystery. Readers may wonder if they should admire or pity Mitty or if Mitty is a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Despite the scenes of action, there is no real plot to the story. Walter Mitty runs some errands and waits for his wife while she gets her hair done. He is no different at the end of the story from who he is at the beginning. Furthermore, none of Mitty's imagined adventures end in triumph. In all scenarios, Mitty the hero is set to perform a heroic act when, sadly, his daydream ends as abruptly as it began. Either someone yells at him or his wife appears, denying his reverie a successful conclusion. Mitty himself even interrupts his own daydream. Having just called the district attorney a "miserable cur," or dog, he murmurs, "Puppy biscuit"—one of the items his wife has sent him to buy.

The final daydream does provide some closure to the story as "Walter Mitty the Undefeated" stands before the firing squad. He is "inscrutable to the last"—unknowable, that is, to his captors as to his readers—but he is certainly the hero of his own life.

Walter Mitty's Personae

Throughout the story, Walter dreams up several heroic personae he has created for himself. These characters are a stark contrast to Mitty's own, real-life identity. In reality, Mitty is weak, passive, and constantly nagged by his wife, while in his daydreams, he is daring, heroic, tough, and admired by women.

From uttered words to mundane objects and events, Mitty's surroundings spark his over-the-top fantasies. For example, the simple act of driving a car triggers Mitty to imagine that he is the fearless commander of a navy hydroplane heading into a terrible storm. Mrs. Mitty's screams over Mitty driving too fast not only snap Mitty back to reality, but also help readers to understand the humor in the fantasy—in his daydream he is the fearless commander, but in actuality it is his wife who rules the roost, or is in charge.

Although Mitty finds inspiration from his surroundings, it is Mrs. Mitty who inspires his most vivid reveries. "You're tensed up," she remarks in response to Mitty's disregard of the speed limit and observes that Walter is having one of his days. She follows up with a comment about how she "wishes" he would let Dr. Renshaw, the Mittys' physician, look him over.

It is clear that Mrs. Mitty has threatened him with an exam before. It also becomes apparent that Mitty has little respect for Dr. Renshaw's knowledge of medicine. He imagines that a "distraught and haggard" Dr. Renshaw calls him, the famous Dr. Mitty, in for a consultation on a very important patient. Two medical specialists accompany Renshaw. They compliment Mitty on his medical research, and it is Renshaw who begs Mitty to take over the operation when "coreopsis has set in." Thurber uses the word coreopsis as nonsense medical jargon—the term actually refers to a type of flowering plant. Having Renshaw use faux medical language such as coreopsis and the earlier "obstreosis of the ductal tract" adds humor to the scene as Mitty pokes fun at his family physician in his fantasy.

Another stark contrast is made between Walter Mitty—henpecked husband and average Joe—and his alter ego Dr. Mitty when a scolding from the parking lot attendant snaps Mitty back to reality. In his fantasy, Dr. Mitty is the top doctor who coolly and calmly repairs failing hospital equipment and saves people's lives. However, Walter Mitty fails at parking his own car and must surrender his keys to the more skilled parking lot attendant.

Mitty's inability to recall his wife's shopping list causes him frustration with his weekly errands. Even though she herself cannot remember everything on the list ("Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name"), she expects him to remember. A newsboy's shouts about the Waterbury trial are the trigger for Mitty's next fantasy, in which he is defendant Mitty, accused of murder.

Here, Thurber is referring to the Waterbury trial of 1938. Having nothing to do with murder, the trial resulted in the conviction of Connecticut's lieutenant governor T. Frank Hayes (1883–1965) and other government officials who conspired to defraud over one million dollars from the city of Waterbury.

In Mitty's fantasy, the district attorney slyly produces a handgun and asks the defendant (Walter Mitty) if it refreshes his memory. Not only does the defendant declare it his very own Webley-Vickers 50.80, but he boasts that he can also shoot it equally well with both hands. Exuding masculinity, he imagines a beautiful woman rushing into his arms; for good measure, he punches the district attorney when he tries to pull the woman away.

Mitty snaps back to reality, this time on his own. The defendant's proclamation that the district attorney is a "miserable cur"—a dog— jogs Mitty's memory and causes him to utter "Puppy biscuits." He becomes embarrassed when a woman who overhears his utterance jokes about him with her friend—a direct contrast to his move to protect the honor of the beautiful courtroom woman.

Photographs of bombers and ruins in a magazine trigger Mitty's next fantasy, in which he is a fearless British captain about to fly into enemy fire in World War I (1914–18). The article Mitty reads—"Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?"—suggests the dawn of World War II (1939–45), a worldwide conflict that would begin a year after the publishing of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Mitty fantasizing that he is in battle is indicative of what it meant to be masculine at the time Thurber wrote his story. Men felt the need to confront their fears of battle to prove their masculinity.

Mitty returns to the here and now when Mrs. Mitty strikes his shoulder and scolds him for hiding from her view in a deep chair in the hotel lobby—another contrast to the episode involving the beautiful woman in the courtroom. Soon after, Mrs. Mitty leaves Mitty on the street to wait as rain and sleet come down. His emotions about her are evident as he lights a defiant cigarette and then chooses his final fantasy: being stood against a wall before being executed. Here, Mitty goes into his fantasy so subtly that it may take the reader a few seconds to realize that he is daydreaming. Unlike previous fantasies, this one does not involve humor. In this way, Thurber is now placing the real-life Mitty into his own fantasy. The firing squad he faces may represent the people who continuously shoot him down, belittle him, and are a challenge to his masculinity in real life. Still, Mitty smiles bravely, facing his killers wearing no blindfold. He is "Walter Mitty the Undefeated." He will continue to stand tall and embrace who he is in the face of ridicule.

Walter and Mrs. Mitty

A reader might feel some sympathy for Mitty's exasperated wife. To her, often he is off in his own world, oblivious to what's happening around him. There's no indication of Mitty's actual age, but Mrs. Mitty tells him, "You're not a young man any longer." His seeming inattention frustrates her. His only defense is to protest that he is "thinking." Mrs. Mitty's response is, "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home."

However, readers are far more likely to root for Walter Mitty. His wife nags him and assigns menial chores for him to do. Though Mrs. Mitty reminds him that he is not a young man, she treats him like a child. She tells Mitty to wear his overshoes and gloves and threatens to have Dr. Renshaw, the family physician, check him out. What his wife sees as inattention is really Mitty's attempt to escape from her and reshape the world around him.

James Thurber, like his hero, had his trouble with the women in his life. Many people described his mother, Mary "Mame" Fisher Thurber, as an "eccentric woman." Because of marital discord and separations, Thurber's marriage to Althea Adams, a woman with a "dominant personality," ended in divorce after 13 years. Both women influenced many of the female characters in Thurber's fiction and cartoons.

Walter Mitty is henpecked, inept and impotent, and wary of his mate, a woman who is the stereotypical "garden club dowager" who became "one of the ornaments of The New Yorker humor." "She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd." To escape her, Mitty's imagination explodes with adventures at the slightest prompting. While driving a car, he fantasizes about flying an airplane. The sight of a hospital inspires a scenario in which doctors call on him to save an important patient from an unimaginable illness. In his dream world, Mitty is always the hero with cold, gray eyes, a steady aim, and casual courage. In reality, Mitty is a poor driver who can't park a car or put snow chains on his tires. In his make-believe world, he can fix a "huge, complicated machine" by replacing a piston with a fountain pen. As an assassin, he can fire his "Webley-Vickers 50.80" automatic handgun equally well with both hands. As a doctor, he can cure catastrophic diseases, such as "obstreosis of the ductal tract" and "streptothricosis." He escapes from his mundane life and an unhappy marriage through his imagination, choosing to cope with his life rather than try to change it.

Literary Devices

Part of the story's humor derives from the absurd words that dot Mitty's fantasies. The words contain just enough of a recognizable word part to suggest their meaning. For example, "obstreosis of the ductal tract" suggests some sort of obstruction of a body part, while a "coreopsis" that sets in suggests a kind of sepsis or life-threatening reaction to infection. Coreopsis is actually a plant commonly known as tickseed.

Variations on the sound of pocketa-pocketa, in particular, become funnier as readers encounter the phrase in a new episode involving a machine. It is the noise made by pounding cylinders in the hydroplane episode, the failing anaesthetizer in the operating room—which indicates its distress by going "pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep"—and the menacing sound of flamethrowers in the pilot episode. At once suggesting the wildness of Mitty's imagination and his inexperience with the situations in which he pictures himself, pocketa-pocketa has made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary. Attributed to Thurber's story, it is a noun that suggests a "series of rapidly repeated percussive sounds."

Thurber also includes language that references the culture and events of his day. In Mitty's airman fantasy, the Archies refer to German anti-aircraft guns used in World War I (1914–18). People say that the name comes from a British pilot shouting a line from a popular song—"Archibald certainly not"—as he encountered enemy fire. In the same scenario, Captain Walter Mitty hums "Auprès de Ma Blonde" as he is about to exit the dugout. This title alludes to a French folk song written when France was at war with the Netherlands. In English, the title reads "Near to My Blonde," and the song itself presents images of gardens, flowers, and beauty. In referencing this title, Thurber makes the persona of Captain Walter Mitty comical—he is a brave, brandy-tossing man ready for bloody battle, yet he mistakenly chooses a romantic wartime ballad to hum as he exits.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Plot Diagram

Introduction

1 Mrs. Mitty scolds Walter Mitty for driving too fast.

Rising Action

2 Mrs. Mitty reminds Mitty about his chores.

3 A police officer and parking attendant belittle Mitty.

4 Mitty cannot recall the chores he must do.

5 Mitty daydreams that he is the defendant in a murder trial.

6 Mitty daydreams that he is the captain of a bomber plane.

Climax

7 Mitty becomes annoyed with Mrs. Mitty's scolding.

Falling Action

8 Mrs. Mitty leaves Mitty on the sidewalk.

Resolution

9 Mitty imagines himself standing in front of a firing squad.

What is the message of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty short story?

How does the work end in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty short story?