In life, people often use traveling as a mechanism to do one of two things: find themselves or lose themselves. The actual circumstances of the journey itself do not have to be exoctic or far away, it can be as simple as Walter Mitty’s excursion in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” In this short story, Mitty travels alongside his wife through their somber town past various physical locations. These locations give the reader a glimpse inside Mitty’s mind as they elicit daydreams about several events, such as Mitty being a world famous surgeon or even his own apparent death as he intentionally steps into gunfire.
As Mitty grows older, he is in a position that allows him to look back on everything he has accomplished and, frankly, become disappointed …show more content…
The physical locations he visits or notices such as that hospital, the grocery store, etc., are perceived to be ordinary parts of a daily life, similar to the lives most people lead. Mitty’s life provides the perfect parallel to the lives most average people lead while being unhappy. It shows how instead of modern society progressing the standard quality of life, it is depleting opportunities for a vast majority. From a young age of five years old, children are forced into school where they then must stay for the next thirteen years of their lives, next, it is only anticipated that these new high school graduates will attend a reputable college, acquire a degree, and then spend nearly the rest of their life in a good, established career. For some people, they luck out; they excel throughout school, discover a career they thrive in, and enjoy this path that society arranged for them at birth. On the other hand, some people are not so fortunate; they struggle through school, and then find a career that they miserably commute to everyday to sit at for eight hours. Mitty’s story directly represents the majority of the population who suffer from the latter; he grew old with many regrets and his physical journey of life was used for things other than what he genuinely wanted to do. Life should be a physical and mental journey to find and create yourself, rather than lose yourself as Mitty did, to see new things and meet new people, to go new places and do something you love doing and venture off the well worn path society has
As Mitty grows older, he is in a position that allows him to look back on everything he has accomplished and, frankly, become disappointed …show more content…
The physical locations he visits or notices such as that hospital, the grocery store, etc., are perceived to be ordinary parts of a daily life, similar to the lives most people lead. Mitty’s life provides the perfect parallel to the lives most average people lead while being unhappy. It shows how instead of modern society progressing the standard quality of life, it is depleting opportunities for a vast majority. From a young age of five years old, children are forced into school where they then must stay for the next thirteen years of their lives, next, it is only anticipated that these new high school graduates will attend a reputable college, acquire a degree, and then spend nearly the rest of their life in a good, established career. For some people, they luck out; they excel throughout school, discover a career they thrive in, and enjoy this path that society arranged for them at birth. On the other hand, some people are not so fortunate; they struggle through school, and then find a career that they miserably commute to everyday to sit at for eight hours. Mitty’s story directly represents the majority of the population who suffer from the latter; he grew old with many regrets and his physical journey of life was used for things other than what he genuinely wanted to do. Life should be a physical and mental journey to find and create yourself, rather than lose yourself as Mitty did, to see new things and meet new people, to go new places and do something you love doing and venture off the well worn path society has