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Kandace Keddington

Short Story Analysis

Eng2010

19 April 2020

We’re All Dreamers

You know the classic phrase, “a dream is a wish your heart makes?” Well, what if you

somehow lost track of what was a dream or a wish and what was real? How different would your

life be if your dreams suddenly became reality, or it at least seemed that way? Typically we see

stories where this happens from the perspective of children, stories such as Alice In Wonderland

or even Peter Pan. Many of these authors write these stories to embrace their inner child and

make it seem as if dreaming was something that only children were allowed or supposed to do.

James Thurber decided to approach this concept differently. He dives deep into the mind of a

middle aged man and shows that everyone of all ages is a dreamer whether we like to admit it or

not. He also addresses the psychological issues this man faces and shows what could happen if

we become consumed by our dreams.

James Thurber was born on 8 December 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. From a young age, he

became accustomed to the fact that there were many aspects of life he could not control when he

was shot with an arrow which ultimately caused permanent damage to his eye. After accepting

this fact, he escaped through his illustrations and writing. He moved to New York after leaving

Ohio State University without a degree. He intended on pursuing his passions and he did just

that. He was an illustrator for The New Yorker for a period of six years. After this, he,

unfortunately, had to put illustrating on the back burner due to his failing eyesight from the
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accident. This allowed him to focus primarily on writing which would lead him to be as widely

recognized as he is today. Thurber took his mindset of not understanding or being able to control

the real world and applied it to his writing. One piece of writing that he is particularly recognized

for that exhibits this attitude is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. This story features Walter Mitty,

a man who is dissatisfied with the life he has so he dreams of what his life could be but

ultimately loses touch of the barrier between his real life and the one that he wishes he had. In

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, James Thurber dives deep into Mitty’s mind using a

psychological context and uses meticulous repetition, well thought out foreshadowing, and

creative allusion to illustrate the theme of how serious it can be to be inside your own head and

the potential dangers involved.

Walter Mitty is an average man living an average life in an average town. He dreams of

being a man who lives a life of adventure and thrill. He frequently dreams of this man that he

could be and does so so frequently, to the point that he soon has no control over what or when

the dreams happen. His brain has become so messed up that he can’t control the things it does. In

order to really show what’s going on inside of Mitty’s mind and what kind of man he wants to

be, Thurber uses a lot of repetition throughout his story. One of the most distinct examples of

repetition is in the behaviors, attitudes, and personalities of the man that he is dreaming he could

be. He dreams of being a sailor, a soldier, a surgeon, or even just a man who does crazy things no

matter what those may be. These similar personality traits show that Walter longs to live an

extraordinary life but he feels, for lack of a better term, stuck in his ordinary routine, with his

ordinary job and his ordinary life. This is why he dreams of living an extraordinary life.
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Another form of repetition that he utilizes is the recurrence of objects and events in

Mitty’s dreams. This is for the same purpose mentioned above, that Mitty dreams of being a

certain type of person who does certain types of things. An example of this is shown when Mitty

is dreaming of being a man who is on trial for murder. It states, “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,’ he said calmly.” (Thurber par. 10) Now besides the fact that the man in the scenario is

clearly different from the man he is in actuality, that event may seem somewhat unimportant.

But, if you were to keep reading, you would realize the significance. Later on in the story, Mitty

finds himself inside of a dream where he is a Captain in the military. The story reads, “Captain

Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic.” (Thurber par. 13) The

same gun is mentioned in two different dreams that Mitty finds himself in. It appears that

Thurber used this to illustrate that maybe this was a gun that Mitty had always wanted to own but

deep down, he knew that he wasn’t the “type of man” who would own a gun like that. By

showing a recurrence of events and objects in his dreams, it shows that he isn’t just having

random dreams. It proves that there is this specific man inside of his head that he wants to be. It

is this longing to be a different man that causes him to get caught in these dreams and lose track

of reality. Looking at these situations from a psychological viewpoint, it shows that Walter

exhibits such a dramatic dissatisfaction with his current life, that he has quite literally made up a

different man inside of his head that seems real to him.

While a key point of Mitty’s life is the fact that he gets so dangerously lost in his dreams

that are so so drastically different than his real life, Thurber did manage to maintain a single
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bridge between Mitty’s make-believe world and his real life. Thurber used foreshadowing to

illustrate this bridge. While it may not be as prominent reading it this first time through, reading

it a second time will make it clear. You will come to notice that every dream is triggered by

something happening in real life. If you were to read this story paragraph by paragraph and cover

up whatever was to come next, it is likely that you could predict what his dreams were going to

be about by whatever was going on in his real life. The first example of this is just before his

second dream in the story. It says, “He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he

drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.” (Thurber par. 4) He then gets lost in a

dream about being a surgeon. Another example is in the ninth paragraph which reads, “A

newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury Trial.” (Thurber par. 9) He is then

caught in a dream where he himself as a defendant in court. These are just a couple of examples

but this happens all throughout the story. This genuinely shows that he has little to no control

over his dreams. His desires are always fresh in his mind so the littlest things can send him into a

dream. Something in his brain takes these dreams and because they seem so genuinely real to

him, it starts to tamper with his real life and it gets to a point where he genuinely loses touch of

reality. This proves that the littlest things in his life can send him into a dream about the type of

man he wants to be.

Thurber never directly states that Mitty is dissatisfied with his current life and situation,

however, this entire story is a nudge to that fact. Thurber is using allusion to make this fact clear.

Throughout this entire story, Thurber is using Mitty’s dangerously realistic dreams to allude to

the fact that Mitty is not pleased with the life he is living.
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In this story, it is important to not get caught up in the details but to look at the overall

picture. Now, maybe Walter didn’t necessarily want to be a person on trial for murder or

someone on the tail end of a firing squad but he just desperately wanted to be more than he was.

He wanted to live an adventurous life where every day was a mystery as to what was going to

happen rather than the routine life he was living where he took orders from his wife and dreamed

of what he could be. And while it’s healthy to dream and think about how you could improve to

become who you want to be, Mitty gets dangerously trapped in the augmented reality he has

made up in his head. He has spent so many years dreaming of who he could be that his brain

loses track of his real-life and this augmented reality he’s made. Thurber uses repetition,

foreshadowing, and allusion to illustrate this psychological issue that Walter Mitty has that

causes him to be dangerously stuck in this augmented reality.

When it comes down to it, whether we’ll admit it or not, we’re all similar to Mitty in a

sense. We all dream of who we could be and what we could do. While it’s unlikely that we’ll

find ourselves in the same predicament Mitty was in, the dreams that we desperately wish to

come true can sit and eat at us and cause an unhealthy amount of stress. So what can we do

differently than Mitty? We can do everything in our power to make our dreams come true. No

one wants to live in a world of miserable people doing miserable things so we need to do what

we love and never get stuck in that rut of dissatisfaction. In the end, we’re all dreamers and we

all have the power to make our dreams come true despite the odds.
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Works Cited

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” ​The New Yorker.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/03/18/the-secret-life-of-walter-james-thurbe

r. 10 April 2020.

“James Thurber Biography.” ​Encyclopedia of World Biography.

https://www.notablebiographies.com/St-Tr/Thurber-James.html​. 10 April 2020.

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “James Thurber: American Writer and Cartoonist.”

Encyclopedia Britannica.​ ​https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Thurber​. 10

April 2020.