Narrator Leaves Walters Secret Life Very Open

A detailed Summary of Narrator Leaves Walters Secret Life Very Open

A story is only as good as the one who tells it. Anyone can write a story, but a good writer knows how to use the tools of writing correctly. One of these tools is point of view. There are a few different points of view a writer can use. There is first person. This is where the teller is participating in the story. Then there is third person. This is where the teller of the tale is not participating in it. With third person the teller could be in everyone's minds. He knows what everyone is thinking. Or he could just know what one character is thinking. Yet another type of third person is where the teller of the story is explaining it as if he is really there but doesn't have any access to the characters inner thoughts. In the "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" the author uses the third person point of view, but the teller of the tale is only knows what Walter is thinking. Otherwise known as third person selective omniscience. I believe that this is important to the story because it gives the reader a picture of what is going on in Mitty's life and mind, and allows him to make up his own decision about what kind of people Walter and his wife are.

The storyteller does a good job of giving a neutral portrayal of events in th

This story was written for the purpose of humor. It is suppose to be funny. But I fail to see the humor. In the beginning of the story I was kind of surprised when it went form a ballsy Commander flying a plane "through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying", to some seemingly old man and his wife driving to town. After the initial shock, I thought that this man was absolutely losing his mind. I figured Mitty to be some crazy old man. I assumed him to be old, but I don't think that his age was ever mentioned during this story. Well, after that first seen I began to become curious as to what his next fantasy would be. I wanted to find out whether there was any truth to them. I don't believe there was. I've come to the conclusion that Walter was just an ordinary man, possibly going through a midlife crisis, thinking about what he could have become and how great he could have been. To me this is not very funny. The only remotely funny part of the story, in my opinion, was at the end when he stood before a firing squad and he said, "To hell with the handkerchief". This final scene put a cartoon like picture in my mind of a great and honorable man getting executed for his crimes. All things considered, I don't believe this wasn't a funny story.

Overall, I think that James Thurber did a good job of putting this together. I liked how he left this whole story open to different types of opinion. One can get from this story whatever he desires. Just because I didn't find this to be funny, doesn't mean that someone else, with a different viewpoint, can't find humor in it. I think that that is a good writer who can portray a story to be understood in different lights.

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Approximate Word count = 1147
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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