The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Video

James Thurber’s 1939 short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” follows the day of a married man as he accompanies his wife to Waterbury, Connecticut. While she gets her hair done, he goes about town running different errands she has tasked him with, but all the while he lives another life in his imagination, inhabiting such colorful characters as a dauntless hydroplane commander, a deft surgeon, an infamous crack shot, and a WWI captain. Thurber’s story has had long lasting appeal, as Mitty’s imagination seems to represent a power that allows ordinary people to escape their lives of quiet desperation.

As the story begins, the commander of a Navy hydroplane is flying through a perilous storm. The commander's crew, including a certain Lieutenant Berg, clearly express their dismay and lack of hope, while their leader, whom they reverently call "The Old Man," stands as a pillar of strength and urges them on through the maelstrom.

Suddenly, the dialogue transitions abruptly. Walter Mitty—alias Commander—has in fact been daydreaming while driving a car, and has let his speed rise just a bit too high for Mrs. Mitty, who berates him to slow down. As Mr. Mitty snaps out of his reveries and drops his wife off at the hairdresser’s, she reminds him to buy overshoes, admonishing him of the necessity, as a grown man, to keep up proper appearances; in the same way, she also inquires as to whether he has his gloves on him, which he dutifully produces from a pocket.

As he resumes his drive, he slips into a second daydream about being a famous British surgeon coming to operate on a wealthy banker called Wellington McMillan. In the operating room the surgeons greet each other, and Dr. Mitty receives significant praise from his colleagues for his past work. As the other surgeons set about work, a complicated machine crucial to the operation begins to malfunction; Dr. Mitty calmly calls for a fountain pen and deftly uses it to fix the machine.

This fantasy is brought to an end by the voice of a parking-lot attendant. In reality, Mitty has been trying to make his way in a parking lot and in doing so has nearly crashed into another car. Walter seeks out the nearest shoe store and buys those overshoes his wife reminded him about.

As he exits the store, a newsie strides by shouting the latest updates on an infamous trial that has everyone’s attention. And like that, Walter Mitty is in a courtroom, on the witness stand, a fearless sharpshooter standing up to the blistering cross-examination of the District Attorney. The DA hands Mitty an automatic gun, which Mitty admits is his own, examining it expertly, and avowing his own expertise as a shooter.

He goes into a store to buy puppy biscuits, which his wife has also asked him to buy, and then sits in the hotel lobby to wait for his wife to finish at the hairdresser's. There, he picks up a copy of Liberty magazine and reads the title of an article: "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?"

This prompts a fantasy of himself as British Captain Mitty in the midst of World War I, on the front lines fighting the Germans. Speaking with a sergeant who is rattled by the constant artillery shelling around them, Mitty fearlessly downs some brandy and volunteers to pilot a plane to bomb an enemy ammunition dump. He leaves the dugout and heads out into danger.

As Captain Mitty sets out from the dugout, we hear that "Something struck his shoulder." It isn't shrapnel from an enemy shell; it is Mrs. Mitty, who has returned from her hair appointment. She asks him whether he has gotten the puppy biscuits and the overshoes. Seeing that he is carrying the latter in a box, she berates him for not having put them on in the store.

"I was thinking … Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" he replies, for once standing up to her, but this prompts a similarly uninterested response from her. On their way back to the car, Mrs. Mitty goes into a drugstore. Outside, Mitty lights up a cigarette. He leans up against the drugstore wall as it starts to rain and sleet.

At this moment, he shifts his posture, standing up straight. He imagines himself before a firing squad about to meet his end, which he does with heroic pride and disdain. He flicks away his cigarette and awaits his fate; the narrative finishes by describing him as “Walter Mitty, the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.”