The Story Behind the Story: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
by James Thurber

“We only live once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?”

“WE’RE going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice
breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided
white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make
it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking
you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power
lights! Rev her up to 8500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the
cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He
walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8
auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated
Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the
Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to
their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy
hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us
through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!”

“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you
driving so fast for?”

“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside
him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a
strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to
fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty.
You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury
in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in
twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of
his mind. “You’re tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your
days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife
went to have her hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes while
I’m having my hair done,” she said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said
Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been all through
that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young man any
longer.” He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your
gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket
and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned
and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took
them off again. “Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light
changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He
drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past
the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

“It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty
nurse. “Yes?” said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has
the case?” “Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two
specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-
Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long, cool
corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and
haggard. “Hello, Mitty,” he said. `’We’re having the devil’s own time
with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of
Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take
a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr.
Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.” “I’ve read
your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking
hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty.
“Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington.
“Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.”
“You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine,
connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began
at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new
anesthetizer is giving away!” shouted an intern. “There is no one in
the East who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low,
cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-
pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of
glistening dials. “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone
handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the
machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for ten
minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over
and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale.
“Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take
over, Mitty?” Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow,
who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great
specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white gown on him,
he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him
shining.

“Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on
the brakes. “Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking
at Mitty closely. “Gee. Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to
back out of the lane marked “Exit Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said
the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of the car. “Hey,
better leave the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition
key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent
skill, and put it where it belonged.

They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main
Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take
his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound
around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and
unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty
always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The
next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t
grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I
couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush
on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began looking
for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box
under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing
was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they
set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these
weekly trips to town–he was always getting something wrong.
Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Tooth paste,
toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He
gave it up. But she would remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its-
name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the what’s-its-name.”
A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.

“Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney
suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness
stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty took the gun
and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” ho said
calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped
for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I
believe?” said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!”
shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could
not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in
a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty raised
his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any
known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory
Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium
broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the
bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s
arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising
from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin.
“You miserable cur!”

“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the
buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and
surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. “He said
‘Puppy biscuit,'” she said to her companion. “That man said ‘Puppy
biscuit’ to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. & P.,
not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street.
“I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any
special brand, sir?” The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a
moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on the box,” said Walter
Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes’
Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it;
sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the
hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual.
He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put
the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked
up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany
Conquer the World Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the
pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

“The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said
the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair.
“Get him to bed,” he said wearily, “with the others. I’ll fly alone.”
“But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men to
handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air.
Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got
to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of
brandy?” He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself.
War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the
door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the
room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty carelessly. ‘The box
barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once,
Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He
poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could
hold his brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon,
sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers
automatic. “It’s forty kilometers through hell, sir,” said the sergeant.
Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what
isn’t?” The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-
tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing
pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty
walked to the door of the dugout humming “Aupres de Ma Blonde.” He
turned and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said.

Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel
for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair?
How did you expect me to find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter
Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-
name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said
Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” ‘I was thinking,”
said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes
thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature
when I get you home,” she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly
derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to
the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here
for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.” She was more than
a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with
sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . .
He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the
handkerchief,” said Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on
his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting
smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and
motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated,
inscrutable to the last.