The Secret Life of Walter Mitty VS The Necklace April Kahl
ENG 125 Introduction to Literature
Angela di Guaico
March 3, 2014

When comparing and contrasting short stories. One should look at tone, irony, theme, symbolism, and imagination. When all these literary terms are combined they make stories. The secret Life of Walter Mitty, and The Necklace, there is similarities in gender role of the characters, but there is differences, both of these short stories represent relationships in their marriage, through the main characters, and the roles they play. In this paper I will explain the similarities as well as the differences the characters play in both stories. I chose these two stories because they both have the same theme about marriage and love. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and The Necklace are written in third-person narration, and throughout the two stories one person point of view it also allows you to see the dreams and thoughts of the main characters. In ‘ The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, you are given some insight to his imagination of events throughout his day of errands that his wife is having him do while she is getting her hair done at the salon. In ‘ The Necklace’, you are given some insight into Madame Loise’s unhappy and depressing life that she lives and when she is given the opportunity to go this high end event we get to see w her at the ball in her dream, in the dream she is admired as much as the necklace she borrowed from a close friend for the ball. Her desire to be part of a high society in which she does not belong. The dream is captivity but destructive. Walter uses his day dreams of an exciting James Bond like life to escape his incredibly boring, predictable life. His wife does not like adventure at all, she even fears going above the maximum speed limit. “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs Mitty.” What are you driving so fast for? “( Clugston 2010 para 2). The theme of success and failure is examined trough Mitty’s inability to live a full filling external life, which causes him to retreat to an internal like full of image of conquest. Walter Mitty is neither exciting nor successful in his everyday life. The theme of the story the life of Mathilde and her husband. She was a beautiful and charming girl, born in a family of artisan. She thus had hopes of marrying a man of her dreams, rich and with a social status. She ended up marrying a poor man working as a clerk in ministry of education. Her husband through intensive pleading, managed to get two invitations to the ministry’s party. His wife refused to attend the party stating that she has nothing to put on. “Nothing, Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I” (Clugston, 2010, para.21). The husband used the money he had saved in order to buy a gun used it to buy her a dress. His wife is still not satisfied and demands to put on an expensive jewelry. With no money left, the husband was of the opinion that the wife opt to borrow jewelry from her close friend. She borrowed what she thought was a very expensive necklace, while at the party; she realized that the diamond necklace was no longer there. The two searched it to no vain; they were forced to take loans from their fiends to buy a necklace just like the one that got lost. To repay the loan, they worked for ten years to raise the 36,000 francs. She later finds out the necklace did not cost that much.
Story analysis/critique It is evident that Mathilde while using her gender in trying to look like other women who are from well off families landed herself as well as her husband into a longer period of toiling paying for a necklace not worthy of their efforts. In her desires, the family went into borrowing which later made it take ten years to repay the loan.
After sacrificing his money that was intended to buy a gun, her husband used it to buy her a dress, she not only didn’t show pleasure but also gratitude and demanded a jewel.
This made her husband allow her to borrow from her friend, what this depicts is that women can plunge the whole society into trouble, in this scenario, the family toiled for ten good years repaying the loan, resulting to wriggled wife that can no longer be recognized by her friend. This signifies that as much as we desire for equality and recognition in the society, the price for doing so is extremely high. These are among the sacrifices men undergo to try their level best to make the women they love feel appreciated and satisfied but most often than not, their counter parts (spouses) do not see that and will always crave for more.
This is a representation of gender roles and/or marriage from Thurber’s "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a short story that talks of a man and his wife and the imagination of events through his day. The main symbols that stood out to me were the rain and the color white, which was mentioned a few times. According to the text, the color white often symbolizes life, insight and surrender. Rain can symbolize either sadness or blessing. In this story, I would say that there was a sense of sadness and blessedness. The theme that seems the most relevant for this story is one of freedom in regard to our minds. This seems to be a common theme that we see often in books and in movies. The main character jumps from one day dream to another throughout the story. His thoughts range from romantic to militant but they all seem to be very satisfying to him. This story drives home the idea that our minds can take us anywhere, even if our real lives are nothing like our thoughts. I think that stories with themes such as these are useful in that there is usually some inspiration to draw from. I think that this is especially the case with productions such as the 2013 movie version of this story.
Although I do think that the story and the movie are disconnected in many ways, I believe that the overall gist is there and that this was a moving story nonetheless.
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At this far we see a situation where the male gender is portrayed to be very weak and cannot be able to confront his wife for such small issues. The man is seen to be controlled by her wife as her wife to be very independent of her life as a part of family. Nevertheless, despite of her domineering ability, the wife is seen as not oppressive to the man. All over a sudden, as his struggle to remember the things, a newspaper carrier shouted something about the Waterbury trial and it is at this point we see the escapist nature of the male gender as portrayed by the book. He seems to say that, “perhaps this will refresh your mind”. In his daydream, he sees district attorney place a heavy automatic figure at the stand where witness was. He is asked in his dream if he has ever seen that before (Napierkowski & Rose, 2006).
Therefore, he examines it and claims that it was his fifty-eight webly-vickers. The court process is seen to proceed at his dream but the aim of the whole episode was to escape from his forgetful nature and at the end of his fantasy dream, he is seen to have gone through this and surpassed his forgetful mind. This shows a loser in the male gender in the family as Walter is displayed to comfort himself to be a hero. He even thought to be a US navy pilot to ensure that he portrays himself as a hero but only in the fantasy world while all those are not real but are there to ensure he see his life complete and to forget his short comings. Otherwise, her wife is seen to be independent of her mind and realistic of issues. This makes the reason why she is able to rule over her husband.
Conclusion
From the review of the story by Guy de Maupassant, “The Necklace” and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty written by Thurber we clearly see the issue of gender, sexuality, gender and power, equality and prestige. Mathilde in her quest to try suit a life status that is beyond her as well as capability of her husband has landed her into serious trouble. In the other short story, Walter is a man that is afraid of his wife and life in the world of fantasy. In both the works, main characters live a life of denial seek to imagine a better life. It is also evident that there are varied roles played by the respective gender; however, Walter unlike Mathilde the husband does most of the house work like running errands while the wife enjoys the luxuries of life. Walter also seems to forget things easily.

REFERENCES Clugston, .R.W, (2010). Journey into Literature. San Diego, California: Bridegepoint Education, Inc.