Essay: The secret life of Walter Mitty

My response to this short story is that it is a combination of fantasy and real life fiction. Walter Mitty, a middle-aged man, who breaks away from his normal life by daydreaming and having these fantasies about himself doing tremendous and amazing things to other people and his wife. To let the reader know that this story of Walter Mitty, both starts and concludes inside Walter Mitty’s fantasies. Walter Mitty, of course, is always pretending that he is somebody else rather than being himself. His fantasies all see him as being a triumphant person and a valiant individual, who is called upon to save the day, but, that’s only in his dream. He sees himself as a hero of some sorts, such as a doctor and a pilot commander from the navy and also a victim of the firing squad. But in the real world he would rather spend his livelihood wandering or daydreaming of the things that he isn’t, instead of being himself; rather make real changes is his life.
The meaning of Walter Mitty’s final daydream or fantasy in the short story is that it can be pointed out or seen as a factual hero. In this part of the story, Walter mention the firing squad. He fantasizes and dreams of being shot or killed by the firing squad. He comes up to the firing squad so courageously; he is, at his final stage, upright and motionless. This can be understood as an indication that Walter Mitty’s fate is just to accept the fact that he has a boring and dull life. Walter Mitty, in his gentle modest way, has chosen his own trail and declines to submit to the desires of his unyielding wife and or the society around him.
The tone of this Walter Mitty story is that it is a comedy, in such a way for the reason that Walter Mitty is a grown middle-aged man who lives a very tedious life but yet so much he dreams of this life of being a person of high standards, rather than being himself, so in there is just a vast dissimilarity between his fantasies and his everyday life. There’s also a vast amount of irony installed in the story. In every fantasy, in every dream, that he has or have, is irony. His perspective towards the fantasy is that he believes that these fantasies can come true while in the real world he allows his own wife to control or boss him around.
The theme of this short story is to show the readers that we must stop wandering off to never land, daydreaming and live our lives the way we want. To stop fantasizing about the things we aren’t and get out there and make something out of life, and to not be anxious to live our lives with an adventurous and bold spirit. Nonetheless, it also shows the readers, that our dreams can conquer our actual reality, and what’s really going on in the real world. An example would be, Walter Mitty’s fantasies, it turned out to be so real for him and then he comprehends that these dreams or fantasies that he is having, they are not false, and it’s just in his mind and that he is just living a normal life.
This story is a great example of a third person limited omniscient point of view. The difference between Walter Mitty’s Fantasies, his daydreams, with his boring everyday life, is that it expresses what the story is all about. Asides from all that is written above on this essay, after reading through this story I found that there are some moral values installed in this short story. Moral values such as we must behave ourselves in society and matters of principles and more generally what is believed to be considered usual or typical. In this case, Walter Mitty, for example, he in no way changes on the outside because he hardly ever moves away from his apparent behavior of inaction, the direct opposite of his action-packed fantasy world. As such the social moral is that Walter should give in the same kind of equivalent energy he uses to daydream into changing his shared world and his marriage with his wife. The story also remarks on the lifelessness of the middle class. We recognize Mrs. Mitty’s dissatisfaction but we too have to understand Walter Mitty’s need to get away from the dullness of the recurring, responsible life of an adult.
In conclusion, Walter Mitty does have dreams. Dreams of being a hero that saves the day. But he’s not dreaming them while in bed, like everyone else is when they go to sleep. Instead, he’s fantasizing these occurrences while he’s awake while driving while shopping, talking to his wife. He sees himself as a hero that can save and protect everybody, but doesn’t actually do anything about it. He is just your average Joe that is taking his wife to the hair salon and gets her hair done. In addition to while getting her hair done, he runs some of his own errands that he has. However, in everyday life, all that we witness, experience, feels, hears generates these scenes in his head in which he, Walter Mitty is the hero of the story and he’s living and breathing right in it. While everyone looks at him like he’s weird and strange, and for him he doesn’t see what is wrong with this.