The short story deals with a vague and mild-mannered man who drives into Waterbury, Connecticut, with his wife for their regular weekly shopping and his wife's visit to the beauty parlor. During this time he has five heroic daydream episodes, each inspired by some detail of his mundane surroundings. The first is as a pilot of a U.S. Navy flying boat in a storm, followed by Mrs. Mitty's complaint that Mitty is "driving too fast". As he drives past a hospital, he imagines himself a magnificent surgeon performing a one-of-a-kind surgery. Later, a newsboy shouting about the "Waterbury Trial" begins Mitty's third fantasy, as a deadly assassin testifying in a courtroom. While waiting for his wife, he picks up an old copy of Liberty, reading "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?", and begins his fourth daydream, as a Royal Air Force pilot volunteering for a daring suicide mission to bomb an ammunition dump. As the story ends, Mitty stands against a wall, smoking, and imagines himself facing a firing squad, "inscrutable to the last."
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