His description of himself in this episode suggests a man of steel. Modern American life is bedeviled by mechanical devices, technology, the demand for superefficiency, and Mitty dreams that he is a master of it all. Mitty imagines that he is a navy commander piloting a hydroplane through the worst storm in 20 years of flying. The story begins with an episode of fantasy. Whereas Shakespeare's Macbeth crosses the border between thought and action in his quest for power, Thurber's Mitty is placed in circumstances that permit him to enjoy power only in fantasy and offer him no avenue of achieving it in real life. The story is about craving for power by the powerless. Mitty's occupation is not specified, but the suggestion generated by his lifestyle is that he is some type of clerk. Lindner points out that "Mitty is a descendant of Rip Van Winkle and Tom Sawyer" in serving to orchestrate the theme of conflict between the individual and society, and "he dream-wishes qualities customarily exhibited by the legendary frontier hero." At the same time the main theme of the story, the craving for power, is presented in a distinctively modern context. His chief character, Walter Mitty, has forerunners in native folklore and fiction. Thurber's story has its roots in American cultural tradition. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (collected in My World- and Welcome to It, 1942) is arguably the best of his stories and is still cited as an exemplar of its form during that period.
He died in New York in 1961, and is today recognised as one of America's greatest twentieth-century humourists.As a comic short story writer, James Thurber had few rivals in the mid-twentieth century. From 1927 onwards he was on the staff of the New Yorker, and first published much of his work in it. After university (Ohio State) he worked at the American Embassy in Paris from 1918 to 1920, and then turned to journalism. James Thurber was born in 1894 at Columbus, Ohio, where, as he once said, so many awful things happened to him. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is just one of the brilliant humorous and witty stories written by James Thurber and collected here. But he has dreams - vivid, extraordinary day dreams - in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he - a weary, put upon middle-aged man - is the hero of his own story. Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. The very best of James Thurber's hilarious short stories and essays, to tie-in with the major new film starring Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig.
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