Monday, 12 August 2013

Short Story Reads: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber


There is a little bit of Walter Mitty in all of us. 

First published in the New Yorker, this 1939 short story tells of a middle-aged day dreamer who is out shopping with his wife. Walter Mitty wades in and out of dream at the wink of an eye - from manning a ship through a hurricane to saving a patient by sheer genius to playing a sharpshooter accused of murder. Mitty plays his own TV channel, getting all the kicks that his routine, boring life doesn't offer - all in in his mind though.  

One can't help identifying with Walter Mitty. Will we end up like that too, having lived an unfulfilled youth, stuck in the routine of middle age, day-dreaming through the glorious adventurous life we could have been living? Man's greatest need is to be needed and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty vents open the pores to the gap that lies between how we live and how we meant it to be.


(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

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