james thurber's the secret life of walter mitty

The character is mentioned in the opening lines of the Mark Lindsay 1970 hit song, ' Silver Bird': 'Get aboard the silver bird, departing gate 19/Satisfy your Walter Mitty mind, tryin' out a dream.' So the character is set as an example to be unconventional. Walter Mitty as a better alternative to wearing grey. In the song Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Ian Dury refers to the clothes of Mr. Warner, noted in his autobiography, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood, 'To the Walter Mittys of the world he was all the heroes in one magnificent, sexy, animal package'.

When referencing actor Errol Flynn, Warner Brothers studio head, Jack L. The most famous of Thurber's inept male protagonists, the character is considered 'the archetype for dreamy, hapless, Thurber Man'.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as 'an ordinary often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs'. The character's name has come into more general use to refer to an ineffectual dreamer and appears in several dictionaries. ( December 2013) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. In the brief snatches of reality that punctuate Mitty's fantasies, the reader meets well-meaning but insensitive strangers who inadvertently rob Mitty of some of his remaining dignity. 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. Although the story has humorous elements, there is a darker and more significant message underlying the text, leading to a more tragic interpretation of the Mitty character. In a few dozen paragraphs, he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life.

It was made into a film in 1947 starring Danny Kaye, with a remake in 2013 directed by, and starring Ben Stiller. Thurber loosely based the character, a daydreamer, on himself. Walter Jackson Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's first 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.

James thurber's the secret life of walter mitty