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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
Cohlmeyer, Lou Chetta
ENG 125
Kim Elliot-White
October 29, 2012

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” Thurbur uses satire to call attention to the humorous ways in illustrating the daydreamer in Mitty, and the background of this story about a marriage relationship. In this story Mitty is constantly lost in his own world of being anyone he chooses or desires to create in his own mind while escaping the serious realty of married life. While Mitty withdrawals in each daydream he believes himself to be a figure of someone very important. His imagination is always very vivid and sometimes humorous to the reader, and he was always in a dream world that his character seemed to enjoy. His many daydreams will take us through many different encounters of who Mitty vivid imagination of who he wants to be and it seems that in each of his daydreams he is a person of importance like the commander of an 8-engine hydroplane as the story begins. This piece was chosen because of the imagination of Mitty moving almost constantly from one daydream to another just to find solace or peace from the world surrounding him. Always in being the person in charge of the situation they were in or being the one to save the day (a hero) of sorts. Perhaps many people can relate to Mitty daydreaming because at one point or another in our life we have all taken a moment out of reality to visit a place far away. Daydreaming to find some tranquility or remembrance of something long past that was good. “We’re going through!” “The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye” was the scene in his first daydream. This scene begins in the icy cold weather of a hurricane and the roaring pocketa-pocketa sounds of the cylinders of the hydroplane in this daydream which caused



References: Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey Into Literature. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education. Thurber, J. (1942, March 18). The secret life of Walter Mitty. My world and welcome to it. New York: Harcourt, Brace. (Original work published 1939)

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