The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Sigmund Freud ostensibly said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” but Thurber’s imagery—rife with oversized guns, mortars, bomber planes, “pounding” cylinders, and other symbols of tumid masculinity—might have made his day. Every one of Mitty’s daydreams features at least one instance of phallic imagery, usually a vessel of explosive (or at least turbulent) power; and the repeated juxtaposition of this phallic aggression with his submissive, almost feminized real life provides much irony and humor.

Even in Mitty’s most sedate daydream (the surgery), a “huge, complicated machine” with “many tubes and wires” suffers a catastrophic malfunction, due to a “faulty piston” (Paragraph 6). As it reels toward breakdown, its pulsing sounds (“pocketa-pocketa”) erupt into an adenoidal squeak (“pocketa-queep”), suggesting a sort of mechanical emasculation (Paragraph 6). Mitty the surgeon springs manfully into action. Silencing a naysayer (“Quiet, man!”), he decisively thrusts a fountain pen into the faltering machinery to replace the impotent piston, saving the day (Paragraph 6). This pen(is?) might symbolize the fantasies themselves and the surrogate manhood they provide, replacing something weak, worn, and shambling with a sleek, potent efficacy. The fix will only “hold for ten minutes” (Paragraph 6)—about the length of one of Mitty’s daydreams.