Lets get the cat out of the bag first. There is no secret that whenever we hear the word ‘Places of Mind’ we instantly think about the mind place that Sherlock introduced to the modern age. He has this whole mental palace where he stores his trail of thoughts, memories and calculates every move.
Instead of appropriating this thing, I believe are more old school and personal approach would be the way. You know how you are a kid and start to fantasize vivid imagery by just looking at an object. For example say you are sitting in one of rides where you put in a coin and the ride (be it a car, train or a rock) moves back and forth.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – Short Story
People who are daydreaming and not paying attention to the outside world are referred to as Walter Mittys.
Walter Mitty rose to prominence as a symbol of America.
This short tale seems to fit the description of a garden path story because it is written in “Thurber’s own narrative style – economical, mildly sardonic, and brilliantly evocative” (Holmes 218).
To intentionally deceive someone is meant by the idiom “to lead someone along the garden path.”
The narrative begins in the middle of one of Mitty’s delusions, in which he is a naval commander in charge of a hydroplane during a violent storm.
Mitty is the ideal officer, revered by his team for his valour and skill.
The reader and Walter Mitty both recognise that the situation is entirely in Mitty’s head: He is truly behind the wheel of an automobile, and his wife is yelling at him to slow down.
Similar real-world incidents serve as the catalyst for the other delusions in the narrative.
Mitty imagines donning medical gloves as, in the character of an internationally renowned surgeon, he prepares to operate on a billionaire banker after Mrs. Mitty tells him to wear his gloves.
Thurber skillfully contrasts Mitty’s everyday life—he is running errands for Mrs. Mitty while she attends her hair appointment—with more serious problems of life and death.
Mitty starts to see himself in court as the ideal defendant as a newsboy shouts out the headlines of a murder trial, but then he connects the word “cur” with the puppy cookie his wife has asked him to buy.
Then, in one of the story’s funniest passages, Mitty imagines himself as a gallant World War II pilot attacking a German ammunitions plant while reading a copy of Liberty magazine.
Mrs. Mitty interrupts him for the last time because he has forgotten the dog biscuit. Mitty then visualises a firing squad and resolutely rejects the blindfold.
References
One Small Step. 2018. [Film] Directed by Bobby Pontillas Andrew Chesworth. s.l.: s.n.
Thurber, J., 1939. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. s.l.:The New Yorker.
Arsalan Awais 