Seeing the world, dangerous things to get close to, seeing behind walls, getting closer, finding yourself and feeling. This is the purpose of life.”- Walter Mitty (film). Life is about finding yourself, others and being true to yourself. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an extremely original and creative story written by James Thurber. The film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, tells of a dreamer who escapes from his typical life by disappearing into a realm of fantasies full of heroism, romance and action. In both the film and the book, the title character retreats into fantasy as an escape from his mundane reality because in the real world he is ordinary, insecure, and passive. In the story, Walter simply retreats into his daydreams and tolerates his domineering wife, while in the film he actively pursues the search for himself. Walter Mitty, a shy, passive, and harried husband, embarrassingly incompetent at ordinary tasks, constantly falls into daydreams in which he takes on heroic roles such as flying through a storm, shooting down German planes, and performing delicate surgeries. The story begins with a commander trying to get an "eight-engine Navy flying boat" (Thurber) through a storm. The commander, valiantly attempting to gain control of his crew, shouted, "Full strength in turret No. 3!" The crew, busy with various tasks in the huge, speeding eight-engine Navy seaplane, looked at each other and smiled. “The Old Man will let us through,” they said to each other. "The Old Man is not afraid of Hell!" (Thurber). Mrs. Mitty interrupts this fantasy when she says, “Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "Why are you driving so fast?". From this moment it can be deduced that Walter has... in the middle of the paper... the same pace everywhere. While in the film, his fantasies play an active role in pursuing his quest to find the missing negative for the latest edition of Times magazine, or else he will lose his job. Furthermore, the film takes the book a step further by having Walter ultimately experience these immensely wild fantasies, on his trip to Greenland, when he finds Sean Although it plays with the visually fascinating concept of dreams and their possibilities in ordinary life, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" rarely explores the theme with the imagination it deserves. Walter's quest, the mysteries he must solve, the completely unexpected ending, and the tediously predictable love between him and Cheryl simply overwhelm the notion of dream life and its connections to what we like to think of as real life, that 'infinitely fascinating subject for cinema.