Daydreaming is a waste of time, as we’re often told, but some disagree and think it is a doorway to creativity. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, presents Mitty’s daydreams to show that he wants to escape his wife’s control and constant nagging which also expresses his emotions of dissatisfaction and self-pity. Walter Mitty spends most of his time escaping into daydreams in which he is heroic and life is adventurous. He is literatures greatest dreamer. As “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” begins, a military officer orders and airplane crew to proceed with a flight through a dangerous storm. The setting switches to an ordinary highway, where Walter Mitty and his wife are driving into the city so Mrs. Mitty can get her hair done and run some errands. Mittys observant wife sees that Mitty is tense …show more content…
When she banters Mitty, he escapes into a fantasy. Mitty imagines himself as the Commander of a Navy plane going through a rough storm over the ocean. In real life he is driving a car, taking his wife to the hairdresser, and she is shouting at him for going too fast. “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast! […] You know I don’t like to go more then forty. You were up to fifty five.” (Thurber 1). Mitty fantasizes about the control that he's missing in his marriage. During the course of the ride to the hair salon, the constant put-down Mrs. Mitty puts on Mitty leads him into escaping the variety of fantasies. At one point he thinks about how everyone is “so damn cocky” when he makes mistakes. He hated the weekly trips because he was always doing something wrong in his wife’s eyes. When the nagging escalates from Mrs. Mitty, that’s when Mitty disappears into his fantasies because he cannot mentally take the negativity. The failures of his everyday life are countered by the extraordinary success he plays out in his dream