The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Literary Elements

Short story

The action takes place in Waterbury, Connecticut around 1938.

Third-person limited, following the perspective of protagonist Walter Mitty

Comic, Ironic

Walter Mitty (protagonist) vs Mrs. Mitty, or reality itself (antagonist)

Walter Mitty is inept with practical matters and suffers under his wife's henpecking.

Mitty fantasizes himself before a firing squad.

All of Mitty's fantasies involve some sort of fatal danger, leading to the finality of the firing squad daydream.

Expressing his frustration at her constantly interrupting his daydreaming: Mitty asks his wife at the end: "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" He is clearly deeply unhappy, but can only phrase his upset as a rhetorical question.

Mitty as a captain in World War I hums the French soldier's song "Auprès de ma blonde."

All of Mitty's fantasies take place in highly stylized, almost cinematic scenes. For example, his World War I fantasy has the whole trench dugout trembling under the impacts of artillery shells, with dirt and pieces of wood thrown about.

Mitty has a clear grasp of what it means to be a very masculine man, a type his personas embody in his dreams; but in real life, he feels emasculated and frustrated.

Mitty as a criminal punches a man and calls him "Your miserable cur!" The literal meaning of the insult then makes him think of "puppy biscuits," the item his wife told him to buy.

Mitty's impressive guns (a pistol as as criminal, a machine gun as a soldier) represent his prowess in combat.

Several machines in the story are described as making a "pocketa-pocketa" sound that makes them almost like characters speaking.