33 pages • 1 hour read
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
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Symbols & Motifs
Clothing/Garments
Clothing, in Mitty’s fantasies as well as in his actual life, embodies his sense of identity and self-esteem; it is a measure of the power (or lack thereof) he enjoys in his two lives, real and imagined. Mitty bridles at his wife telling him to buy galoshes to protect his feet from the cold weather, and at her reminders to wear his gloves. This casual exercise of control over him, paired with her pointed allusion to his declining physical prowess (“You’re not a young man any longer”), chafes at his sense of autonomy and self-respect, making him feel infantilized (Paragraph 4). His response, meek and ineffectual in real life, flips the balance of power in his fantasies. In his first daydream, every detail of the Commander’s wardrobe accents his unquestioned authority, knowledge, and bold flamboyance: a “full dress uniform” (undoubtedly bedecked with medals), and a “heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly” (Paragraph 1). In his second daydream, the world-renowned surgeon Mitty decides for himself when to put on his gloves; in this case, only after being kowtowed to by desperate colleagues, who beg him to save the life of a millionaire banker as only he can.
Machines
For Mitty, the ability to navigate and control is a primary concern in his thwarted life. This sense of lack finds symbolic compensation in his daydreams, in which he has a mastery of “complicated,” often immense, machines. In the real world, the omnipresent contraptions of modern life confound him: traffic lights, tire chains, automobiles that will not stay in the proper lane. Even the revolving doors of a hotel trumpet their disrespect with a “derisive whistling” when he pushes them. But in his daydreams, machines both intricate and powerful pose no difficulty at all—in fact, they reflect his own complex brilliance and dynamic potency. In the “huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane,” he knows just which of the many “complicated” dials to twist to save the day (Paragraph 1); only the renowned Dr. Mitty knows how to fix a “huge, complicated” anesthetizer, which he does within seconds, with a fountain pen (Paragraph 6); he alone can pilot a huge bomber in a crucial mission to take out an ammunition dump.
Violence
In all but one of Mitty’s fantasies, the motif of violence erupts or hangs menacingly in the air—whether in the form of a deadly hurricane, a mortar barrage, or an off-camera firing squad taking aim. In his courtroom fantasy, Mitty may himself be a murderer; in any case, he is a “crack shot” with any firearm and can punch out a hectoring District Attorney without even rising to his feet. This atmosphere of constant peril and excitement connotes more than just Mitty’s boredom with his mundane existence; it crystallizes a chronic and otherwise repressed frustration with his lack of agency and respect in his life and marriage. In his courtroom fantasy, Mitty associates the District Attorney with his domineering wife, whose complaints about his faulty memory find an instant echo in the DA’s “Perhaps this will refresh your memory” (Paragraph 10). The punch Mitty lands on the DA is a symbolic revenge against Mrs. Mitty—and the other forces that thwart him—a cathartic violence that he would never attempt in real life. Outside his fantasies, the most violent thing he does is kick a pile of slush.
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