The Story of an Hour and the Secret Life of Walter Mitty: A Comparative Analysis - Assignment Example

The Story of an Hour and the Secret Life of Walter Mitty: A Comparative Analysis The Story of an Hour and the Secret Life of Walter Mitty: A Comparative Analysis The human need to live the life freely is well depicted in both of the stories. “The Story of an hour” is explaining the reaction of a wife whose husband just died. The broken woman finally realized that she will not going to live her life in order to please someone else. The importance of perception is conveyed throughout the story (Chopin, 1894).

The humans have to learn the art of viewing the bright side of the situation for example people lose their jobs and commit suicide in response while, others consider and treat it as an opportunity to relax and find a new workplace to engage and learn new things. The world is a mirror and therefore, one will see what they want to see. The basic and fundamental purpose of this paper is to highlight how people do not live their lives freely due to social pressures. The death is the part of human life and the wife came to realize the benefits of her husband’s death.

Additionally, she is healthy and young and because of these reasons, she can live a happy and fulfilling life. She is well aware of the fact that she will cry and sob when she will see the dead body of her husband but she is also willing to let it go and live her life individually that she cannot do before. The husband was apparently not letting his beautiful life-partner to live her life in a free environment. He was always imposing his ways onto her. Now she is free of all that and finally got an opportunity to do what she wanted to do and most of all she will be happy (Chopin, 1894).

The gentleman named Walter Mitty has an imaginative mind and therefore, he has a habit of imagining things and scenarios in which he is the central character. Nevertheless, he is overly controlled by his wife who is not at all appreciative of her husband’s core competencies (Thurber, 1939). Moreover, Mitty is doing all of the things that his wife is supposed to do and she is living a fulfilling and enjoyable life. The wife’s inability to appreciate his husband’s most beautiful part is the key reason for his miserable psychological condition.

The important and valuable message of the story highlights the need to calculate one’s success on the basis of what he or she can do. The quote of Albert Einstein stated that “Everyone is a genius and if one is going to measure fish’s competence on the basis of her ability to climb a tree then she will end up thinking herself as a fool”. Same thing is going on with Mitty. Mitty is also very significantly responsible of his condition because he never learned to trust himself and his abilities.

All he needed to do is to sit down and write his thoughts on the piece of paper. But he has a fearful personality and therefore, he is unable to take his creativity out of his crippled body because he fears that people will reject his works as they do with him (Shim, Wang, & Cassady, 2013). The featured character of the story is in fact not aware of the fact that people do not like him because he has failed to accept himself and once he is going to be able to do that then the world would bow in front of him as it did to every creative soul in the past.

The gender roles are also reversed in this case but again Mitty is to be blamed because he let his wife treat his like that. The lack of initiative is the biggest problem that Mitty is facing in his life. Furthermore, it is important to note that the wife in the story entitled “The Story of an Hour” has finally managed to see the opportunity to live a free life and ultimately going to do that. Similarly, Mitty has to find an opportunity and turn it to his favor (Leach, Butterworth, Olesen, & Mackinnon, 2013).

The featured person has to take charge of his life and it is not at all difficult because he has to tell his wife that hey I am not going to do these ordinary works as I am going to get engaged in my work and put my creative and imaginative energies to work. Both of the stories represented a reality that is very common all around the world. The core concept that is at the heart of each work is the presence of imbalance in marital relations and people have to understand that their partners are equal and because of this reason, they have the equal right to pursue their dreams in life.

The marriages are like partnerships and they should act like the source of happiness and satisfaction for both of the individuals (Fowers, 1998). The stories collectively guided the readers to learn to live their lives without making any undue sacrifices in order to accommodate others. The story of a wife who lost her husband is more energetic and motivational because it is communicating the positive side of the worst reality of human life and Mitty’s story is rather hopeless and depressive because he is not yet able and willing to see and let others see the most beautiful part of himself.

Conclusively, it can be established that humans must learn to make their own choices and they should also focus on doing what they can do while getting others’ help in completing at which they are not good. Mitty represented many husbands who have practically disowned their-selves in order to make people happy and proud while, the other story told about a wife who is willingly embracing the process of recovery by seeing the bright side of a catastrophe. The key message of both the stories in combine attempted to provide motivation to the pained humanity of the world that consists of people who want to do exceptional things in life but cannot do them because of fear, hopelessness, sorrowfulness and lack of energy.

Finally, people must learn to see the bright side of each situation because perception is reality. References Chopin, K. (1894). The Story of an Hour. New York: Vogue. Fowers, B. (1998). Psychology and the Good Marriage Social Theory as Practice. American Behavioral Scientist Vol 48 (4) , pp.516-541. Leach, L., Butterworth, P., Olesen, S., & Mackinnon, A. (2013). Relationship quality and levels of depression and anxiety in a large population-based survey. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Vol 48 (3) , pp 417-425. Shim, S., Wang, C.

, & Cassady, J. (2013). Emotional well-being: The role of social achievement goals and self-esteem. Personality and Individual Differences Vol 56 (7) , pp.840–845. Thurber, J. (1939). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.