The Secret Life of Walter Mitty


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For the 1947 film, see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947 film).
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
Author James Thurber
Country  United States
Language English
Genre(s) short story
Published in The New Yorker
Publication type Magazine
Publisher Harcourt, Brace and Company
Media type Print (Periodical, Hardback & Paperback)
Publication date 1939 (magazine), 1942 (book)
Preceded by ""Death in the Zoo""
Followed by ""Interview with a Lemming""

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939) is a short story by James Thurber. The most famous of Thurber's stories,[1], it first appeared in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939; and was first collected in his book My World and Welcome to It (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942).[2] It has since been reprinted in James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (The Library of America, 1996, ISBN 1-883011-22-1), and is one of the most frequently anthologized short stories in American literature.[3] The story is considered one of Thurber's "acknowledged masterpieces".[4]It was made into a 1947 movie of the same name, with Danny Kaye in the title role, though the movie is very different from the original story.

The name Walter Mitty and the derivative word "Mittyesque" have entered the English language, denoting an ineffectual person who spends more time in heroic daydreams than paying attention to the real world.[5]

Contents

Plot summary

The short story deals with a vague and mild-mannered man who drives into Waterbury, Connecticut with his wife for the regular weekly shopping and his wife's visit to the beauty parlor. During this time he has five heroic daydream episodes. The first is as a pilot of a U.S. Navy flying boat in a storm, then he is a magnificent surgeon performing a one-of-a-kind surgery, then as a cool assassin testifying in a courtroom, and then as a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot volunteering for a daring, secret suicide mission to bomb an ammunition dump. As the story ends, Mitty imagines himself fearlessly facing a firing squad, "inscrutable to the last."

Each of the fantasies is inspired by some detail of Mitty's mundane surroundings:

  • The powering up of the "Navy hydroplane" in the opening scene is followed by Mrs. Mitty's complaint that Mitty is "driving too fast", which suggests that his driving was what led to the daydream.
  • Mitty's turn as a brilliant surgeon immediately follows his taking off and putting on his gloves (as a surgeon dons surgical gloves) and driving past a hospital.
  • The courtroom drama cliché "Perhaps this will refresh your memory", which begins the third fantasy, follows Mitty's attempt to remember what (besides overshoes) his wife told him to buy; and also a newspaper vendor using news of a trial to sell his papers. (Thurber once used the same line to caption a cartoon in which a prosecutor shows the defendant a kangaroo.)
  • Mitty's romanticized version of British pilots in the early days of World War I is inspired from his looking at "an old copy of Liberty", which contains images of a war in which the United States was not yet involved at the time of the story's publication.
  • The closing firing squad scene comes when Mitty is standing against a wall, smoking.

Themes

The story depicts a man whose extremely mundane life is constantly interrupted by the character's escapist fantasies. Whereas the fantasy Mitty is not scared of anything, the real one protests feebly, if at all, at demands that he behave cautiously. Similarly, the admiration bestowed on Mitty in the fantasies contrasts with much less pleasant interactions with real people. Aside from being ordered around by his wife (who seems to genuinely worry about him, and wants to take his temperature to see whether he is sick), Mitty is yelled at by a policeman and a parking lot attendant, and laughed at by a woman who hears him say the words "Puppy biscuit".

Yet none of the fantasies end with Mitty winning through in each dangerous situation; the first four fantasies are interrupted, and the fifth ends with Mitty facing the firing squad.

Sources

It has been suggested[citation needed] that Thurber got the idea for Walter Mitty from a book by a leading British crime-fiction writer, Anthony Berkeley Cox. Cox, writing as Francis Isles ten years earlier, in a book called Malice Aforethought (Chapter 2), has a character named Dr. Bickleigh who escapes from intolerable reality into fantasies markedly similar in character to those of Mitty.

However, Mitty is very much a Thurber protagonist, so much so that he has been called "the archetype for dreamy, hapless, Thurber Man".[3] Like many of his male characters, such as the husband in "The Unicorn in the Garden" and the physically unimposing men Thurber often paired with larger women in his cartoons, Mitty is dominated and put upon by his wife. Like the man who saw the unicorn, he escapes via fantasies. A similar dynamic is found in the Thurber story "The Curb in the Sky", in which a man starts recounting his own dreams as anecdotes as an attempt to stop his wife from constantly correcting him on the details.

In his 2001 book The Man Who Was Walter Mitty: The Life and Work of James Thurber (ISBN 0-930-75113-2), author Thomas Fensch suggests that the character was largely based on Thurber himself. This is consistent with Thurber's self-described imaginative interpretations of shapes seen with his "two-fifths vision" in his essay "The Admiral on the Wheel".

Wordplay

Thurber's love of wordplay can be seen in his coining of several nonsense terms in the story, including the pseudo-medical jargon "obstreosis of the ductal tract", "streptothricosis" and "Coreopsis has set in"; and the recurring onomatopoeia of "ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa".

1947 film

Main article: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (film)

The story was made into a 1947 movie starring Danny Kaye as a young daydreaming editor for a book publishing firm. The film was adapted for the screen by Ken Englund, Everett Freeman, and Philip Rapp, and directed by Norman Z. McLeod. It was filmed in Technicolor, a rarity at the time.

Thurber was repeatedly consulted about the film's script, but his suggestions were largely ignored by producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had the writers alter the original story to showcase Kaye's talents.[6] In a letter to Life Magazine, Thurber expressed his considerable dissatisfaction with the script, even as Goldwyn insisted in another letter that Thurber approved of it. [7]

Future film

At one time, producer-directors Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg, with Kevin Anderson as Mitty, were to remake the film, but it fell through. A different production is underway at 20th Century Fox, starring Mike Myers as Mitty.

Stage adaptations

Cover for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, with music by Leon Carr and lyrics by Earl Shuman. Originally released on LP as Columbia Records OS-2720 in 1964.

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" was adapted to the stage by Thurber as part of the 1960 Broadway Theater revue A Thurber Carnival. The sketch, which closed the show except for "Word Dance Part II", was nearly identical to the short story, except that at the end he cleverly avoids being shot.[8] The original cast for the sketch was as follows:[9]

  • Peggy Cass as Mrs. Mitty
  • Tom Ewell as Walter Mitty
  • Paul Ford as Mr. Pritchard-Mitford and The Leader
  • John McGiver as Dr. Renshaw
  • Wynne Miller as Nurse
  • Peter Turgeon as Narrator, Lt. Berg, and Dr. Remington
  • Charles Braswell as Dr. Benbow

The story was again adapted for the stage in 1964, this time by Joe Manchester. This musical version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty depicts Mitty at age forty, tempted by "would-be chanteuse" Willa De Wisp to leave his wife Agnes and really live "the Secret Life". It features seventeen songs, with lyrics by Earl Shuman and music by Leon Carr. [10] The musical opened off-Broadway at the Players Theatre on October 26, 1964 and ran for 96 performances.[11] Time Magazine referred to the musical's plot as having been "boldly extrapolated" from the short story, and called the result "a thoroughly pleasant musical evening". [12] Columbia Records issued an original cast recording on LP, also dated 1964.

In popular culture

References

  1. ^ Napierkowski, Marie Rose (editor) (January 2006). ""The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Introduction."". Short Stories for Students, Vol. 1.. eNotes.com.. Retrieved on 2008-07-14.
  2. ^ "Note on the Texts", James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (The Library of America, 1996, ISBN 1-883011-22-1)
  3. ^ a b King, Steve. ""Thurber: Mitty and Dangerous."". Today in Literature. todayinliterature.com.. Retrieved on 2008-07-14.
  4. ^ Dust jacket introduction, James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (The Library of America, 1996, ISBN 1-883011-22-1)
  5. ^ "Walter Mitty" (http://www.answers.com/topic/walter-mitty). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.. Houghton Mifflin Company (2004). Retrieved on 2007-02-13.
  6. ^ Fensch, Thomas (2001). The Man Who Was Walter Mitty: The Life and Work of James Thurber. New York: New Century Books, pg 267. ISBN 0-930-75113-2. 
  7. ^ "Notes for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)". TCM Movie Database. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved on 2008-03-02.
  8. ^ Thurber, James (1962). A Thurber Carnival. New York: Samuel French, Inc. 
  9. ^ "A Thurber Carnival". Internet Broadway Database. The Broadway League. Retrieved on 2008-03-01.
  10. ^ Manchester, Joe; James Thurber (1968). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. New York: Samuel French, Inc. ISBN 0573680507. 
  11. ^ Lewis, David. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". The Guide to Musical Theatre. David Lewis. Retrieved on 2008-07-14.
  12. ^ "Time Listings". Time. Time Inc. (November 13, 1964). Retrieved on 2008-03-02.

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