The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. ‘The Old Man’ll get us through,’ they said to one another. ‘The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!’”

Walter Mitty’s first daydream casts him as a fearless and formidable “Commander” of a massively powerful seacraft, who enjoys the breathless admiration of his crew. As in some of his fantasies to come, the other male characters, lacking his expertise and courage, rely completely on him for their lives or/and livelihood, and their dialogue’s only point is to make this doubly obvious. The crew’s nickname for him, “The Old Man,” suggests not only awed respect but almost familial devotion.

‘“Hmm?’ said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.”

This passage reveals that Mitty has fantasized the hydroplane scene, with himself as its hero. His reverie has so utterly engrossed him that he now (momentarily) fails to recognize the people of the real world, even his own wife. The word “grossly” also hints at his feelings toward his wife.

“‘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.’”

Mitty sees overshoes (galoshes) as trappings of weakness or old age; he would prefer to brave the cold weather without them (as in a later scene, when he kicks a pile of slush). His wife’s casual dismissiveness, and her reference to his advancing years, ironically recall his daydream wherein he is referred to reverently as “the Old Man.”