There is a subtle linkage among Mitty's interactions with his wife, the police officer, and the parking-lot attendant. It has to do with gloves. When Mitty is letting his wife off in front of the building where she goes to have her hair done, she gives him some parting advice and instructions.
“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.
Mitty obediently puts his gloves on, but he takes them off as soon as he gets away from his nagging wife. He is taking his gloves off at an intersection while the light is red, but he is slow to react when the light turns green.
“Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
Mrs. Mitty had recently told him:
“It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”
This triggers one of Walter Mitty's fantasies. He is a world-famous surgeon who is taking over a critical operation on an important patient. There are two references to gloves in this episode.
“Yes?” said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?”
They slipped a white gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves…
While Mitty is indulging in a complicated fantasy about performing a major operation under stressful conditions, he is not paying attention to parking his car properly. He is brought back to reality sharply.
“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 is a poor driver at best. But when he is involved in one of his fantasies he becomes even worse. The Mittys sound like people who have recently moved from a Manhattan apartment to a house in the suburbs, as so many middle-class people were doing after World War II. Manhattanites are noted for being rather incompetent drivers because they rely so much on taxis and public transportation. Mrs. Mitty probably can't drive at all and doesn't even want to learn. Mitty's wife has to wake him out of one of his fantasies because he is stepping harder on the accelerator as he imagines himself Commander Mitty piloting a huge hydroplane in hurricane weather. He must have started to fantasize about being a great surgeon when the cop snaps, "Pick it up, brother!" And he is deep into that imaginary operating-room crisis when the parking-lot attendant brings him back to reality by yelling, "Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!"
Mitty only seems to be living and functioning in the real world. Most of his time is spent in his secret life, his “alternate world.” In that life he is not the absent-minded, barely competent aging man his wife, the cop, and the parking-lot attendant take him for; he is a bold, resourceful, even gallant man who takes charge of things. He is a man of action and not a faceless factotum who works at a desk in Manhattan all day and comes home on the commuter train in the evening. It is apparently because of the deadly routine of his real life, as well as the constant nagging of a wife he no longer loves, that Mitty has felt compelled to escape into a "secret life" in which he is heroic. Some readers may think that Walter Mitty is either crazy or going crazy. But it may be that his secret life is just exactly the safety valve that keeps him sane.
No comments:
Post a Comment