The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 38 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 38 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
This section contains 555 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Study Guide

Success and Failure

The theme of success and failure is examined through Mitty's inability to live a fulfilling external life, which causes him to retreat to an internal life full of images of conquest. Walter Mitty is neither exciting nor successful in his everyday life. In fact, the world Mitty lives in seems hellish to him. His wife's nagging voice awakens him from one dream. Like his wife, parking lot attendants and policemen admonish him, and women at the grocery store laugh at him. A bumbling, ineffectual man scorned by others, he feels humiliated by the knowing grins of garage mechanics who know he cannot take the chains off his car's tires. To avoid their sneers, he imagines taking the car into the garage with his arm in a sling so "they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself."

The failures of his everyday life are countered...

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This section contains 555 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Study Guide
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Gale
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.