Walter Mitty

Walter Mitty
Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty
First appearance	"The Secret Life of Water Mitty" The New Yorker, March 18, 1939
Created by	James Thurber
Portrayed by	Danny Kaye
Information
Occupation	unknown; various fantasy occupations
Title	Commander, Doctor (in fantasies)
Spouse(s)	unnamed except as "Mrs. Mitty"

Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and in book form in My World— and Welcome to It in 1942.

Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. The character's name has come into more general use to refer to an ineffectual dreamer, appearing in several dictionaries.^[1] The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as "an ordinary, often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs." ^[2] Although the story has humorous elements, some critics see a darker and more significant message underlying the text, leading to a more tragic interpretation of the Mitty character. Even in his heroic daydreams, Mitty does not triumph, several fantasies being interrupted before the final one sees Mitty dying bravely in front of a firing squad. In addition, it is possible to read the events in the story as the responses to the stress of reality by an aging man who is sliding into senescence. In the brief snatches of reality that punctuate Mitty's fantasies we meet well-meaning but insensitive strangers who inadvertently rob Mitty of some of his remaining dignity. His wife is the only inhabitant of reality that we meet more than once. Thurber cleverly leads us into accepting her as a nag by giving Mitty's fantasies a charming lightness and comic-book simplicity that disarms deeper scrutiny. On the other hand, her final appearance suggests that she is a woman struggling to cope as her role shifts from loving life-partner to care-giver as Mitty slowly slides into his second childhood.

Use of the term as an insult

In 1977, Andrew Roth entitled his biography of British prime minister Harold Wilson Sir Harold Wilson: the Yorkshire Walter Mitty. Wilson successfully sued Roth for libel arising out of a section of the book referring to Wilson's wife. In his 1992 biography of Henry Kissinger, Walter Isaacson records that on 6 October 1973, during the October War, Kissinger urged President Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff General Alexander Haig to keep Nixon in Florida in order to avoid "any hysterical moves" and to "keep any Walter Mitty tendencies under control."^[3] In 2003, Tom Kelly, a spokesman for British prime minister Tony Blair, publicly apologised for referring to David Kelly as "a Walter Mitty character" during a private discussion with a journalist. In 2007, Automaker Ford admitted that it had to weed out "Walter Mitty" types who had dreams but no experience, prior to the sale of their Aston Martin British GT car brand to a consortium of business interests from America and the Middle East, headed by Prodrive founder and world rally championship owner David Richards. Later in 2007, Conservative British MP Sir Peter Tapsell backhandedly complimented outgoing Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for portraying "…despite the deep disillusionment of his fellow countrymen with his premiership, an optimism that eluded King James II and would have delighted Walter Mitty."^[4] In his book on selection for the Special Air Service, Andy McNab wrote that people who give away the fact that they want to be in the SAS for reasons of personal vanity are labeled as 'Walter Mittys' and quietly sent home. Also, there is a term in military slang, "Walt", which is an abbreviation of Walter Mitty, which refers to someone who has aspirations to become a soldier, but none of the necessary personal qualities. This bit of slang can also refer to someone who poses as an (ex-) soldier but who isn't a soldier (serving or former) or who poses as something he isn't or wasn't. (e.g. a logistics soldier who poses as an SAS trooper, or a member of the Legion of Frontiersmen). Additional derogatory military slang is the "Weekend Walt" which refers to members of the Territorial Army.

Comparable characters

• Walter Mitty was not the first fictional character to escape from intolerable reality into fantasies. British crime-fiction writer Anthony Berkeley Cox included a similar character in his 1931 book Malice Aforethought, which he wrote under the pen name Francis Iles.
• Thurber's character Charlie Deshler from the short story "The Curb in the Sky" has a similar dynamic as Mitty, retreating from his wife into a world of fantasy. He resorts to describing his dreams in order to keep his wife from correcting him. Eventually he ends up in an asylum, describing the same dream over and over, as his wife corrects him on the details.
• The character served as the model for the Waldo Kitty character of the mid-70s (Filmation).
• Cervantes' Don Quixote is an even older character given to "flights of fancy"--a person who is idealistic or who doesn't have their "feet on the ground" is now called "quixotic"
• The Peanuts character Snoopy is a type of Walter Mitty, as is Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes.
• Billy Liar (1959) is a novel by Keith Waterhouse that was later adapted into a play, film, musical and TV series. The semi-comical story is about Billy Fisher, a working-class 19-year-old living with his parents in the fictional town of Stradhoughton in Yorkshire. Bored by his job as a lowly clerk for an undertaker, Billy spends his time indulging in Walter Mitty-like fantasies and dreams of life in the big city as a comedy writer.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's character George Newman, from the film UHF, is also depicted as a Walter Mitty character.
• On Indian television, the character Mungerilal is a Walter Mitty. Day-dreams are often referred to as "Mungerilal ke haseen sapne" in Hindi, which means "Mungerilal's beautiful day-dreams".
• The character of Ally McBeal, played by Calista Flockhart and created by David E. Kelley, is also a typical example of a Walter Mitty, notwithstanding the fact that she is a female.
• J. D. in Scrubs has many fantasy sequences in which he imagines pop culture icons appearing and other irreverent and nonsensical things happening.
• Andy Richter in Andy Richter Controls the Universe (a short-lived comedy television series) has many fantasy sequences in which his day-to-day life turns out much better than in reality.
• Kenny Senior, a working men's club worker from the British comedy series Phoenix Nights is portrayed as a Walter Mitty character, claiming he has connections with the rich and famous, along with the elite SAS branch of the British Army.
• Patrick Bateman, the protagonist and narrator of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, could potentially be a (significantly more morbid) Walter Mitty figure, since the crimes he describes himself as committing in the book may be figments of his imagination; even if he does actually commit some of them, other incidents are so over-the-top as to strain credibility.

References in popular culture

The character was played by Danny Kaye in the 1947 film version, and is scheduled to be played by Mike Myers in a future film version. Thurber opposed the 1947 production. Kaye's Mitty is a more comedic character than the original, who is unmarried, gets drawn into a farcical adventure in real life, and triumphs in ways that the original character does not, even in his fantasies. Walter Mitty is referenced in the lyrics to the songs "Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll" by Ian Dury, "In The City" by Madness, "Dreams" by The Descendents, "All Dressed Up For San Francisco" by The Philosopher Kings, and "Sammy Davis City" by Joe Strummer and Brian Setzer. Mark Lindsay referred to "Walter Mitty mind" in his song, "Silver Bird." Although the character is not specifically referenced within its lyrics, the concept album Eldorado by Electric Light Orchestra focuses on the exploits of a Walter Mitty-style persona. Stephen King in his novel, The Stand describes the character of Paul Burlson as a "Walter Mitty outlaw daydream" when Paul tucks a revolver into the waistband of his dress pants.

References