Walter Mitty: Daydreaming Character
Kaufman (1994) suggests that James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is possibly the most famous American short story. Whether or not that is true (and there are those who might argue for "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", for example, the product of another great American humorist, Mark Twain), his repetitive line, "pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" certainly insinuates itself into the brain once one has read it, much as a rendition of "The Ant's Picnic" ("The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah!") latches onto one's musical brain cells when one has heard its repetitive chorus of nonsense. Unless one puts one's mind immediately on something else, one is likely to "go down into the ground to get out of the rain" along with the ants. In fact, daydreaming-escaping into a secret world-is as common as singing a children's song. Is it a good thing to do? Arguably, prisoners have borne long sentences by inhabiting secret worlds. Also arguably, great scientific breakthroughs have arisen from a scientist's secret world. Great art certainly has been created that way; indeed, Thurber's own early life, the same one that engendered "The Night the Bed Fell" and his dozens of other comic takes on his own real life, would a
Klinger (1987), writing in Psychology Today, noted that the thoughts of humans constantly leap from one thought to another, and from one type of daydream to another. Psychologists, he notes, "usually label thoughts as daydreams if they are about something apart from the person's immediate situation, are spontaneous and are fanciful (with things happening in ways that are contrary to reality)" (p. 36+). If Walter Mitty is the edge-clinging, almost schizophrenic Kaufman contends, then one would want to give daydreaming a wide berth, lest one end up a misanthropic madman whose existence is self-referential in the extreme, that is, a nut job. In this case, daydreaming would definitely-as a precursor to clinical madness-be a bad thing. Is there any difference between their 'secret world' and the secret world of the Kaufman-style Walter Mitty? Or even the Klinger-style Mitty? Despite the potential for logistical problems caused by daydreaming when one has a boring career that nonetheless involves responsibility for the lives of others (lifeguard and truck driver), most people would see daydreams as either neutral or even positive for the respite they can provide from taxing situations, as was the case with Mitty. Moreover, Klinger insists that we all do it, that "daydreams pop into our heads when we bump into a cue-such as words or pictures from the outside world or from our own thought stream-that reminds us of a current concern. We then notice the cue, store it in memory and start thinking or daydreaming about that concern" (1987, p. 36+). For Walter Mitty, an industrial sound such as pocketa-pocketa-pocketa seemed to be a signal to transcend his circumscribed existence and visit the outer reaches of what was then possible. It is arguable that, because he was able to do that, he was sufficiently rewarded in life to be able to anticipate his witchy wife's desires and arrive at their assigned meeting place for after shopping before her, as she desired. If one also posits that keeping marriages intact is a good thing, then for Walter Mitty, his daydreaming served a worthwhile purpose and would
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Approximate Word count = 1429
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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