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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Study Guide

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by James Thurber
About 42 pages (12,734 words)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Summary

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Themes

Walter Mitty is an ordinary character who fills his mind with fantasies in which he plays the hero, saves lives, navigates enemy territory, and proves his masculinity.

Success and Failure

The theme of success and failure is examined through Mitty's inability to live a fulfilling external life, which causes him to retreat to an internal life full of images of conquest. Walter Mitty is neither exciting nor successful in his everyday life. In fact, the world Mitty lives in seems hellish to him. His wife's nagging voice awakens him from one dream. Like his wife, parking lot attendants and policemen admonish him, and women at the grocery store laugh at him. A bumbling, ineffectual man scorned by others, he feels humiliated by the knowing grins of garage mechanics who know he cannot take the chains.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 581 words. This study guide contains 12,734 words (approx. 42 pages at 300 words per page).

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.



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