English for Life Reader Grade 8 Home Language. Elaine Ridge
hundred feet with my left hand.’ Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, darkhaired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. ‘You miserable cur!’ …
‘Puppy biscuit,’ said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. ‘He said “Puppy biscuit”,’ she said to her companion. ‘That man said “Puppy biscuit” to himself.’ Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A & P, not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. ‘I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Any special brand, sir?’ The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. ‘It says “Puppies Bark for It” on the box,’ said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel first: she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. ‘Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?’ Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.
… ‘The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh sir,’ said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. ‘Get him to bed,’ he said wearily. ‘With the others. I’ll fly alone.’ ‘But you can’t sir,’ said the sergeant anxiously. ‘It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.’ ‘Somebody’s got to get that ammunition dump,’ said Mitty. ‘I’m going over. Spot of brandy?’ He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rend of wood, and splinters flew through the room. ‘A bit of a near thing,’ said Captain Mitty carelessly. ‘The box barrage is closing in,’ said the sergeant. ‘We only live once, Sergeant,’ said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. ‘Or do we?’ He poured another brandy and tossed it off. ‘I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Begging your pardon, sir.’ Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. ‘It’s forty kilometres through hell, sir,’ said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. ‘After all,’ he said softly, ‘what isn’t?’ The pounding of the cannon increased: there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine-guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flamethrowers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming ‘Auprês de Ma Blonde’. He turned and waved to the sergeant. ‘Cheerio!’ he said …
Something struck his shoulder. ‘I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,’ said Mrs Mitty. ‘Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How do you expect me to find you?’ ‘Things close in,’ said Walter Mitty vaguely. ‘What?’ Mrs Mitty said. ‘Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?’ ‘Overshoes,’ said Mitty. ‘Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?’ ‘I was thinking,’ said Walter Mitty. ‘Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?’ She looked at him. ‘I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,’ she said.
They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, ‘Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.’ She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lit a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking … He put his shoulders back and his heels together. ‘To hell with the handkerchief,’ said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad: erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
derisively – mockingly
insinuatingly – suggesting something unpleasant without saying it openly
rakishly – (cap) worn at an angle to suggest confidence
| Post-reading | |
| 3. | The word “hen-pecked” comes to mind during reading this story because Walter was constantly being told what to do by his wife. |
| a) | Give one example from the text to show how she hen-pecks him. |
| b) | Do you think Walter deserves to be hen-pecked? Why? |
| 4. | Walter retreats into his secret life and has five separate fantasies. Make a list of them and say which fantasy you like best and why you like it. |
| 5. | All the characters he chooses are strong heroic men involved in dangerous, even violent situations. Why do you think Walter chooses to be this type of character? |
| 6. | Use one example of a malapropism and one of onomatopoeia to show how Thurber uses these: |
| a) | to add to the humour in the story, and/or |
| b) | to serve as a link between one secret life and the next. |
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