A1MW001_D – Creative Writing Workshop

D. Tredy

B. Lesson 2 — Daydreams vs. Reality: The Case of Walter Mitty

Background
Before we try to discuss the rather “fuzzy” line that exists between fact and fiction, there is an
excellent story to work with that functions on a constant, clever ‘switch’ between ‘reality’ and
fantasy within a story. This story by James Thurber has been imitated a thousand times but the
humor and the impact of the story has never quite been duplicated. Some of you may have seen
the 2013 film adaptation The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig and
Sean Penn, but the film completely recontextualizes the premise of the original story in a modern
setting and does not follow the same plot.

In Thurber’s 1939 story, Walter Mitty is a hen-pecked husband whose only means of escapism is
daydreaming, thereby getting away from his humdrum existence and his wife’s brow-beating to
constantly imagine himself as someone else. Note how the story carefully incorporates “triggers”
in the account of Mitty’s daily life—that is, details or events that push Mitty into a specific
daydream and a specific image of himself. When you read the story, be sure to make a
vocabulary list and to check any difficult words in the dictionary. Also try to list the ‘triggers’
that spark each of the five daydreams that occur in the story. This will help you with the writing
assignment that follows

James Thurber (1894-1961)

James Thurber was famous for his witty short stories and for his
unusual and easily recognizable cartoons (Thurber had lost an eye as a
child and suffered from failing eyesight his entire life, until he was
declared legally blind at age 50. With such weak eyesight, he had to
draw his cartoons on huge pieces of paper –two or three feet wide – that
were later reduced when printed in newspapers or magazines). He was
a long-time contributor to The New Yorker literary magazine, and like
many fellow contributors (J.D. Salinger, Roald Dahl, John Cheever,
etc.), he managed to both thought-provoking and witty—if not
downright hilarious. One of his most famous stories is reproduced below. Like many of his
tales, it gives us a hen-pecked husband and his overbearing shrew of a wife. The story was so
successful that the name Walter Mitty has become a common reference, and in psychiatric
circles the term ‘Walter Mittyism’ has been coined to refer to a person’s need to slip into
delusional daydreams of self-importance.

Thurber wrote a great many subjects. His books include a spoof (i.e., a parody) on self-help
manuals, called Is Sex Necessary? (1929, with E.B. White); the fanciful "autobiography" My Life
and Hard Times (1933), the memoir of his years with The New Yorker entitled The Years With
Ross (1959), and the short story collections The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
and The Thurber Carnival (1933). He also wrote the 1950 children's book entitled The Thirteen
Clocks.

After the text below, you will find an explanation of some of the devices and terms used by
Thurber in the story.

Text to read & analyze

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939)
by James Thurber

"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. "We can't make
it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the
Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of
the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice
forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8
auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3
turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks
in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll
get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .
"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"
"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She
seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to
fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter
Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said
Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done.
"Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes,"
said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the
car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves?
Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them
on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them
off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves
and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital
on his way to the parking lot.
. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty,
removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two
specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over."
A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard.
"Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and
close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him."
"Glad to," said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-
Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A
brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty,"
grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are
very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes
and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer is giving away!"
shouted an intern. "There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a
low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep .
He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone
handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place.
"That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered
to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you
would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the
grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on
him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .
"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac,"
said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously
to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away."
Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key.
The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.
They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know
everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound
around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning
garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The
next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm
in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the
sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to
wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out
from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was always getting
something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate,
Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the what's-
its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting
something about the Waterbury trial.
. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at
the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and
examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the
courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said
the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the
defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night
of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled.
"With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred
feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the
bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at
her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. "You
miserable cur!" . . .
"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the
misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy
biscuit,'" she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on.
He went into an A. & P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some
biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in
the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless
they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first,
she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing
a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy
of Liberty and sank down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter
Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.
. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked
up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But
you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are
pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get
that ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the sergeant
and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a
rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty
carelessly. 'The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant," said Mitty,
with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man
could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up
and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers through hell, sir," said the
sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the
cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing
pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout
humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .
Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do
you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter
Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's in
that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said
Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to
take your temperature when I get you home," she said.
They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed
them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I
forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It
began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his
shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully. He
took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about
his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the
Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

Comments

The story is quite enjoyable and is extremely well constructed. Note how we start in the middle
of a day, but we understand that the trigger to this first flight of fancy was the fact that Mitty was
speeding as he was driving his wife into town to have her hair done.

Fill out the chart of triggers for your own reference. How were the other four daydreams
triggered? In some cases, note how there were multiple triggers for the same daydream

Trigger: Daydream:

Mitty is driving too fast_____ Commander Mitty and his crew fly their Navy hydroplane
through one of the worst storms in 20 years of Navy aviation

_________________________ Dr. Mitty saves the life of a millionaire banker & friend to
President Roosevelt and is so resourceful that he fixes a faulty
‘anesthetizer’ with a fountain pen

_________________________ Mitty the sharp-shooter (firearms expert), who is on trial for

murder, who wears his arm in a sling but could have shot the
victim with either hand from 300 feet, who gets the beautiful girl
and who punches the District Attorney in the face

_________________________ A fearless bomber-pilot who is about to fly over occupied

France
and behind enemy lines, ready to take on the German forces
single-handedly if he has to, right after a quick shot of brandy

_________________________ Mitty is bravely facing the firing squad and refuses to be

blind-
folded

In addition to the triggers that spark the daydreams, take note of the way he is brought back to
his ‘real world’ as well (his wife or a police officer shouting at him, a woman laughing at him,
etc.)

Also note some of the devices used by Thurber to help us understand that these ‘episodes’ are
daydreams and are purely the product of Mitty’s fertile imagination. Among these are the
repeated use of onomatopoeia and malapropism:

Onomatopoeia: the use of words representing sounds, and whose sound indicates the sense
or
meaning of the word (e.g., hiss, buzz, crash, boom, bang). Many such words
have entered the language; others are made-up for the occasion.

Examples in the story:

Mitty’s repeated use of ‘pockete-pocketa’ for the sound of any machine or piece
of technology is quite famous (for the cylinders of the hydroplane, the anesthetizer
in the operating room, the flame-throwers used by the German forces, etc.)

Malapropism: the misuse of a word, especially when the speaker is attempting to show
sophistication and erudition through word choice and makes a terrible mess of things.
A good example is the character of Mrs. Slipslop in Henry Fielding’s 1749 Joseph
Andrews, who uses the words ‘infection’ for ‘affection’ or ‘ironing’ for ‘irony’ when she tries to
seduce young Joseph (excerpt in booklet for literature class).

Examples in the story

As a pilot:

A turret (it is something used to protect gunners, not part of the engine)

As a doctor:

Obstreosis (a made-up word; it is not a real medical term, but sounds like one)
The ductal tract (it exists, but it is the system of glands and hormones)

Streptothricosis (a type of skin infection, common when bitten by ticks in the woods)

Coreopsis (not a disease but a bright yellow plant that looks like a sunflower!)

Free Word Association: as Mitty has a limited vocabulary, he often freely associates unrelated
words.
We can see this when he is trying to remember what he needs to buy at the shop.
His mind goes from “bicarbonate” to “Carborundum” (a brand of abrasives) to “referendum”.

Made-Up Brands, Makes and Models: as Mitty is not really a pilot or a marksman, for example,
he repeatedly uses made up names, like the SN202 for a type of plane or the “Webley-Vickers”
make of guns.

Finally, note how many of the references made in the text are rather dated and would have
spoken more to a public of the 1930’s or 1940’s than to today’s reading public. There are the
references to the First and the coming Second World War, to the ‘Archies’ for German pilots or
Von Richtman’s circus, to the ‘A&P’ chain of supermarkets (then the biggest chain in the US), to
the Squibb’s brand of pharmaceutical products and cotton swabs, or to the use of the old-
fashioned insult “You miserable cur!” (in French, ‘malotru’ ou ‘mufle’). What is most amazing
is that in spite of these old-fashioned terms and references, the story still reads as something
fresh and modern and is still a favorite of English and American students.

Writing Assignment
Your first writing assignment is then the following:

Continue the story so that it includes one or two more ‘episodes’ in the life of Walter
Mitty. Try to be true to the style of the text and the devices that were used, so that we
could imagine it as a true continuation that picks up where Thurber left off. You can
start with the moment he is facing the firing squad and come up with a way for him to
‘snap back’ to reality. Then be sure to continue the story to include one or two more
daydreams.