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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the 1947 film, see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947 film). For the upcoming film, see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 film).
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
AuthorJames Thurber
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)short story
Published inThe New Yorker
Publication typeMagazine
PublisherHarcourt, Brace and Company
Media typePrint (Periodical, Hardback &Paperback)
Publication date1939 (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"[5] have entered the English language, denoting an ineffectual person who spends more time in heroic daydreams than paying attention to the real world, or more seriously, one who intentionally attempts to mislead or convince others that he is something that he is not. In military circles, this usually refers to people who try to fake an impressive career.[6] The story had an influence on other humorists, notably Mad founder Harvey Kurtzman (who borrowed the story's sound effects), playwright George Axelrod (who employed Mitty-like fantasies in The Seven Year Itch) and animation director Chuck Jones (who created a Mitty-like child character for Warner Bros. cartoons).

Contents

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Plot[edit]

The short story deals with a vague and mild-mannered man who drives into Waterbury, Connecticut with his wife for their 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 coolassassin testifying in a courtroom, and then as a Royal Air Force pilot volunteering for a daring, secret suicide mission to bomb an ammunition dump. As the story ends, Mitty imagines himself 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 his wife told him to buy, when he hears a newsboy shouting about "the Waterbury Trial" ("You miserable cur" are the last words mentioned in the fantasy. Mitty was supposed to buy puppy biscuits.)
  • Mitty's fourth daydream comes as he waits for his wife and picks up an old copy of Liberty, reading "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?", and envisions himself fighting Germany while volunteering to pilot a plane normally piloted by two people.
  • The closing firing-squad scene comes when Mitty is standing against a wall, smoking.

Themes[edit]

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". 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[edit]

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". Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran suggests that Thurber may have had Charles Bonnet syndrome, a neurological condition that causes vivid and bizarre hallucinations even in blind patients.[7]

Wordplay[edit]

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 the recurring onomatopoeia of "ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa." The medical nonsense that "coreopsis has set in" uses the name of a flower which sounds just like a horrible medical condition.

1947 film[edit]

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 of pulp magazines. 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.[8] 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.[9]
A 1947 radio adaptation of the movie, with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo reprising their roles, was performed on The Screen Guild Theater [2]. Because the show was a half hour, including commercials, Kaye's extraneous routines are pretty much absent, making it more like the original story. Even closer to the original story is a 1944 radio adaptation from This Is My Best, withRobert Benchley as the daydreaming Mitty [3].

Future film[edit]

At one time, producer-directors Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg planned to remake the film with Kevin Anderson as Mitty, but the project fell through. A different production is under way at 20th Century Fox, starring Ben Stiller as Mitty.[10] Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Patton Oswalt, Adam Scott and Kathryn Hahn will also appear in the film. Filming has been taking place inManhattan in May 2012 and in Iceland from July to September; the film's release is tentatively scheduled for Christmas 2013.

Stage adaptations[edit]

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" was adapted for 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.[11] The original cast for the sketch was as follows:[12]
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 40, tempted by "would-be chanteuse" Willa De Wisp to leave his wife Agnes and really live "the Secret Life". It features 17 songs, with lyrics by Earl Shuman and music by Leon Carr.[13] The musical opened off-Broadway at the Players Theatre on October 26, 1964, and ran for 96 performances.[14] 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". [15] Columbia Records issued an original cast recording on LP, also dated 1964.

See also[edit]

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References[edit]

  1. ^ Napierkowski, Marie Rose (editor) (January 2006). "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Introduction.". Short Stories for Students, Vol. 1. eNotes.com. Retrieved 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 "Thurber: Mitty and Dangerous.". Today in Literature. todayinliterature.com. Retrieved 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 2007-02-13.
  6. ^ [1]
  7. ^ Ramachandran, V.S.; Sandra Blakeslee (1988). Phantoms in the Brain. HarperCollins. pp. 85–7.
  8. ^ Fensch, Thomas (2001). The Man Who Was Walter Mitty: The Life and Work of James Thurber. New York: New Century Books. p. 267. ISBN 0-930751-13-2.
  9. ^ "Notes for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)". TCM Movie Database. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2008-03-02.
  10. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0359950/news
  11. ^ Thurber, James (1962). A Thurber Carnival. New York: Samuel French, Inc.
  12. ^ "A Thurber Carnival". Internet Broadway Database. The Broadway League. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  13. ^ Manchester, Joe; James Thurber (1968). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. New York: Samuel French, Inc. ISBN 0-573-68050-7.
  14. ^ Lewis, David. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". The Guide to Musical Theatre. David Lewis. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  15. ^ "Time Listings". Time. Time Inc. November 13, 1964. Retrieved 2008-03-02.

External links[edit]

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The Unicorn In The Garden



The Unicorn in the Garden

by James Thurber
reprinted from
Fables For Our Time
Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him.
"The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; now he was browsing among the tulips. "Here, unicorn," said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely. With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife again. "The unicorn," he said,"ate a lily." His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. "You are a booby," she said, "and I am going to have you put in the booby-hatch."
The man, who had never liked the words "booby" and "booby-hatch," and who liked them even less on a shining morning when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment. "We'll see about that," he said. He walked over to the door. "He has a golden horn in the middle of his forehead," he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn; but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down among the roses and went to sleep.
As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned the police and she telephoned a psychiatrist; she told them to hurry to her house and bring a strait-jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived they sat down in chairs and looked at her, with great interest.
"My husband," she said, "saw a unicorn this morning." The police looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police. "He told me it ate a lilly," she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police and the police looked at the psychiatrist. "He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead," she said. At a solemn signal from the psychiatrist, the police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally subdued her. Just as they got her into the strait-jacket, the husband came back into the house.
"Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?" asked the police. "Of course not," said the husband. "The unicorn is a mythical beast." "That's all I wanted to know," said the psychiatrist. "Take her away. I'm sorry, sir, but your wife is as crazy as a jaybird."
So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived happily ever after.
Moral: Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.
GLOSSARY

  • booby: in this context, a crazy person (probably from the name of a stupid extinct bird).
  • booby-hatch: a mental institution, a place where the insane are kept.
  • breakfast nook: a little side room for eating breakfast.
  • browsing: sampling or tasting here and there.
  • "crazy as a jaybird": extremely crazy or hopelessly insane
  • cropping: clipping or cutting close to the root.
  • cursing: using dirty or obscene speech.
  • "Don't count your boobies until they are hatched": from the American expression "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched", meaning "Don't count on things to turn out exactly as you planned them."
  • gloat: a look of malice or greed.
  • institution: a mental institution, an insane asylum.
  • moral: in this context, the "lesson" of the story.
  • mythical: relating to a myth, hence not real.
  • psychiatrist: a mental doctor
  • solemn: grave or serious
  • strait-jacket: an armless belted jacket used to confine the violently insane
  • subdue, subduing: capturing, seizing
  • unicorn: a mythical beast which looks like a horse with a horn in the center of the head.
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