Fantasy in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Fantasies are what people go through on a daily basis. People love talking themselves away from reality and putting themselves into a world of their own with no limitations to where they could go. People get so into their fantasies that sometimes it may help build confidence or even cause them to lose track on what they were supposed to do or time. Fantasies become a love—hate relationship because at one point, you’re in love with the fact that you’re doing something out of your character and for your own pleasure, but it’s a hate relationship because you know that it will most likely not happen or come to an end soon enough. The short story is written by James Thurber. Mitty and his wife are on their way to do some errands, he indulges in a daydream in which he is a military commander piloting a plane, but his wife interrupts by exclaiming that he is driving too fast. This pattern is repeated several times throughout the drive. When she urges him to make an appointment with his physician, he becomes a surgeon at work, until a parking-lot attendant’s commands call him back temporarily to reality. In reality, Mitty does not do anything very well. Very little actually happens in the short story of Thurber’s. Mrs. Mitty has an appointment at a hairdresser’s; Mitty himself buys a pair of overshoes. While trying to remember what his wife has asked him to buy, he becomes a cocky defendant in a murder case. He manages to buy some dog food and sinks into a chair in a convenient hotel lobby and imagines himself a bomber pilot under fierce attack. His returning wife wakes him with the admonition that she is going to take his temperature when they get home. At the end of the story, Mrs. Mitty goes into a drugstore, and he becomes a “proud an...

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...neration to understand and brought utter disrespect to James Thurber because it had hardly any similarities to his book. The short story ended with Walter picking up his wife and completing the tasks that she had asked and still being him and no more. The movie ended with Walter fulfilling the last picture which was found in the Wallet that Sean O’Connell sent to him in the lab and then he gave it to his boss and told him to print it and he never looked at the picture to it was printed. One thing that should’ve gotten done differently is making the movie portray to the book. By portraying to the book, what should’ve gotten done are the prolong of the driving experience and the prolong of his in city experiences. The movie should’ve stayed in somewhat coordinate of the book so that people are able to actual compare the book and movie more than just a couple of ways.