Adventure, change, exploration. These are things that every human craves, from the average high school student stuck in class, to the average adult suck in a boring and demeaning job. People everywhere want adventure at different times, to shake up their lives. These traits of wanting adventure are shown both in the main characters of Thurber's “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and Allende’s “Uncle Marcos” and are expressed in many different ways that are found to both help and harm them in their lives.
Both characters find their adventures in many different ways than each other. Starting with a quote from “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, “The commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window… The crew bending to their various tasks
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He looked at his wife, in the [car] seat beside him” (Thurber 125). This, part of Mitty’s daydream, shows Mitty’s way of dealing with the mundane, putting himself in a different world. It helps him get through life, by making it seem much more great and fun than it really is. Unfortunately, this drama he is creating hurts him and the people around him. This part of the book shows him driving too fast while he is imagining himself in his “secret life”. Because of this he could have gotten in an accident and hurt himself and the car in the process. In this aspect, he should be more in the moment like Marcos. Speaking of Marcos, he has a different way of breaking up the routine. A quote from “Uncle Marcos” states his way of doing this. “Against all logic, on the second try, the [mechanical] bird lifted off without a mishap… Despite the noble lineage of his aerial map, the flight had been a failure. He had lost his airplane and had to return on foot” (Allende 137-138). This crucial plot point of Marco’s life shows his extravagance and wanting to show off. His adventure happens when he lifts off and leaves to explore. He also goes and explores in many other parts of the book through means of
A character’s relationship to another character or their surroundings determines their behavior. In looking at these relationships in literature, it is possible to determine how characters are transformed with regards to the world around them. Global issues, societal hypocrisy, personal difficulties contribute to the ways in which characters react to situations they face. Insight into one’s priorities, or the world’s problems, causes the characters in Candide, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and The Metamorphosis to question their motives and change their ways of thinking in reaction to the defining events of their lives. The events transform the characters as well as their bonds with others.
In the short story “The Hunter” the author Richard Stark introduces Parker, the main character of this book. The main character is a rough man, he’s a criminal, a murderer, and even an escaped convict. He’s described as crude and rugged and though women are frightened by him, they want him. Parker is not the classic criminal, but rather he’s intelligent, hard, and cunning. In this story the author carefully appeals to his audience by making a loathsome criminal into a hero, or rather, an anti-hero. The author, Richard Stark uses ethical appeal to make his audience like Parker through the use of phronesis, arête, altruism and lastly the ethos of his audience.
To fully appreciate the significance of the plot one must fully understand the heroic journey. Joseph Campbell identified the stages of the heroic journey and explains how the movie adheres meticulously to these steps. For example, the first stage of the hero’s journey is the ordinary world (Campbell). At the beginning, the structure dictates that the author should portray the protagonist in their ordinary world, surrounded by ordinary things and doing ordinary tasks so that the author might introduce the reasons that the hero needs the journey in order to develop his or her character or improve his or her life (Vogler 35). The point of this portrayal is to show the audience what the protagonist’s life is currently like and to show what areas of his or her life are conflicted or incomplete. When the call to adventure occurs, the protagonist is swept away into another world, one that is full of adventure, danger, and opportunities to learn what needs to be learned. T...
Captain Willard develops an obsession for trying to find Kurtz. It is not only a mission anymore, it is more of something that Willard must do for himself. Willard is stalking Kurtz in the movie, this kind of portrays Coppola stalking himself, raising questions which he feels compelled to answer but cannot. Because of his passion to find and kill Kurtz he becomes a marvelous leader. Everyone aboard listens, and goes to him. They are all risking their lives for Willard to get where he has to go.
Throughout the interminable universe of literature, countless authors harness the usage of dynamic characters. In both fictional novels, The Pearl authored by John Steinbeck and The Alchemist written by Paulo Coelho, both authors exploit the uses and arts of dynamic characters. Firstly, The Pearl is an exquisite novel about how a man named Kino becomes incredibly desperate to fish a pearl in order to pay off his son’s medical treatment after a fatal scorpion attack. Momentarily, after Kino’s fortunate discovery of a massive, glorious pearl, he enters and emerges into an inescapable sphere of corruption, greed, and disillusion. Correspondingly, written by Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist displays a stunning plot of how a young boy of the name
With assertive shouts and short tempers, the prominent character, Ricardo, is characterized as a feisty townsman, doing nothing except trying to protect his town and its members from the judgments of the western world. For example, the characterization of the “‘…quaint’” man is exemplified through the simplicity of his life and the fact that he is “‘…employed’” and is full of knowledge, not a “‘cow in the forest’” (55, 29, 32). Ricardo desperately wants to establish the notion that he is not a heartless, feebleminded man, only an indigent, simple man striving to protect his friends and family from the criticisms of callous cultures. Incessantly Ricardo attempts to make it clear to the photographer the irritation elicited by his prese...
Life is about finding yourself, each other, and being true to one’s self. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an extremely original and creative story written by James Thurber. The movie, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, conveys a daydreamer escaping his typical life by disappearing into a realm of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. In both the movie and the book, the title character retreats into fantasy as an escape from his mundane reality because in the real world, he is ordinary, insecure, and passive. In the short story, Walter simply retreats into his daydreams and tolerates his domineering wife, while in the movie he actively pursues finding himself.
Along with these crucial characters, the dangerous adventure itself is a recurring element. The physical journey is necessary for the protagonist to
(1) In Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," the importance of living in the moment and focusing on reality is conveyed through the life of Walter Mitty. The main character of this story, Walter Mitty, is a man who daydreams. He daydreams so often that he misses out on important information and makes avoidable mistakes. Both the short story by Thurber and the movie adaptation of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" illustrate the significance of focusing on reality and the consequences of daydreaming.
“In life, if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything.” - Unknown. To make any difference in your life, you need to take risks. In the books The Alchemist and The Outsiders, characters carry out many risks throughout the course of the book. The Alchemist, a fantasy book written by Paulo Coelho, tells the story of a young Spanish man named Santiago who travels on a personal quest to find treasure that he saw in his dream. He travels on a long journey throughout North Africa to get his Egyptian pyramid treasure, meeting new faces and new ideals along the way. A realistic fiction book by S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders, is a novel about a teen named Ponyboy and his struggles living in the poor side of 1960’s Tulsa. The story shows how him and
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”(Oscar Wilde). In James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Walter Mitty proves to be an inept man, lost in his own mind where he eludes himself from the real world and enrolls several different identities. As a result of his daydreaming, Mitty proves that his natural identity is diverse and composes all of the characters he imagines. In contrast to Lena Coakley’s “Mirror Image”, a teenage girl name Alice has a brain transplant and has to adjust to her new life in a different body. In spite of that, she struggles to decide if is she is still herself. Overall, both authors
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a 2013 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Ben Stiller. Ben Stiller is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He has been in many films and also produced many films such as Meet the Fockers, Madagascar, and Night at the Museum. This is the second film adaptation of James Thurber’s short story of the same name. This film stars Ben Stiller as Walter Mitty, Kristen Wiig as Cheryl Melhoff, Shirley MacLaine as Edna Mitty, and Adam Scott as Ted Hendricks. In this film, Walter Mitty (played by Ben Stiller) lives in his mundane life where he escape it by excessive daydreaming. In his daydreams Walter is the man of his dream where he is always an undeniable hero.
Curiosity is a trait found in various individuals throughout history and present time. Curiosity constantly keeps your mind active instead of passive, helps your mind become observing of new ideas, opens up the doors to new possibilities that were hidden behind the shadow of normal life, and may overall change your character. Individuals such as Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Stephen Hawking, and Leonardo Da Vinci, were just a few of many people that not only benefited from curiosity, but set an irremovable mark in history. The narrator of “Boiling Point”, Jose Andres, illustrates the ideal image of a character filled with curiosity.
Throughout an individual’s life-time, he/she has a vision as o what his/her should be. But when things do not go as planned and the unexpected occurs, does that person face it, or run away? In “An Act of Vengeance” by Isabel Allende, running away is not an option at well. Through the usage of plot, character and irony, Allende illustrates the cost of war.
“…People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of” (23). This quote from the novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, serves as motivation for both the main character, Santiago, and the reader to strive for their mission in life regardless of the many adversities that may arise to stop them. Coelho crafts this novel with thematic depth and an innovative style that includes symbolic characters, which undoubtedly culminates in a novel of literary merit.