Write the critical appreciation of the essay 'The Secret Life of Walter

Write the critical appreciation of the essay ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Ans.

Like many other novelists and story writers of America, Thurber has also traced the character of Walter Mitty in this story, deeply influenced by the materialistic race of the modern culture. He is always nervous and confused and since the beginning, often he is given to day dreaming which is most prob ably the result of his desire to escape from the reality. But he is superior to others in the sense that he is one of the most humorous creations who is dominated by his wife at every step of his wife. He is a weak personality who always seems to be obeying his wife and she often rebukes him for his unnecessary tension and needless escape to his dream land. Even in the course of a few hours, his short period in the market for his various imaginative flights and he forgets where he is or what he is doing. This makes him ridiculous even in the eyes of others but he is unaware of this fact and goes on quite normally.

It can be easily concluded about him that he does not hold a respectable and enviable position in his family as a husband. He may not like anything but if his wife asks him, he has no courage to violate or even oppose her. Hence he is often compelled to do even those things which have no interest for him and this is like his self defence. He is away from the world of reality and his escape into the world of fantasy makes him really interesting.

The only thing that attracts us to him and evokes over sympathy is his nervousness from time to time. In the beginning, he has been handled in the same manner and for once, we feel that he is the commander of some navy airship. He is hurriedly ordering different people to do one or the other duty because, in his imagination, the ship has been overtaken by the storm. In this day dreaming. He forgets that actually he is driving with his wife to Waterbury for marketing. He regains himself only when his wife warns him that he is driving too fast and she does not like it, The writer explains his mental condition through the remark, “Walter Mitty drove on toward Walter bury in silence….through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote.” His wife knows his habit and rebukes him you’re tensed up again.”

We at once feel him a thoroughly henpecked husband and she asks him to bury a pair of overshoes which he has to do, though he does not like the idea much. he is so much disturbed that he cannot even park his car properly and the attendant has to do it. He had taken the wrong lane and so the boy “backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.” The most humous of all his day dreaming is his imagination that he is busy in a unique kind of operation and the man on the table is Willington McMillan, the millionaire banker. He feels as if the operation is very complicated, he is the chief doctor and is instructing assistant doctors. He is handling a big machine which none else but only he can operate. He imagines, “They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves. nurses handed him shining…” and his dreaming ends with warning from the attendant.

In the street, he wandered for sometime and then purchased a pair of overshoes. But now, another thing disturbed him. He remembers that his wife had asked him to purchase one thing more which he has forgotten altogether. he thinks seriously but fails. “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 to Waterbury.” Suddenly hearing the voice of the newspaper boy about some trial, he is again lost in imagining himself before the judge regarding some case related to his gun. A long imaginary discussion goes on in his mind and as soon as there is a reference to a ‘miserable cur’, he suddenly returns to the world of reality that the thing which his wife had asked him to bring was a pack of puppy biscuits and he hurriedly took it. While sitting in the leather chair in the bobby, waiting for his wife to return, he saw some pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets. Mitty at once went back to the battle field ordering his soldiers to perform various war activities. He forgot that he was sitting in the chair and was actually waiting for Mrs. Mitty. He is awakened by his wife’s angry voice who scolds him, “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?” On the way, she stops at the drug store and he remains standing outside. but the rain begins which dis turbs him because he fails to save himself from it. At last, the same feeling is awakened again and “with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad, erect and motionless, proud and disdainful….

Thus, the character of Walter Mitty is something unique and peculiar who is always given to dreams and imagination. But we cannot blame him because he has lost his manhood, his domination in his family which he gains in his dreams, if not in real life. It is, in a way, a kind of self defence mechanism and he pitches himself again and again in the world of fantasy.