Contents Of The Dead Man's Pocket Essay

How many times have we changed our minds on something in one day? All the time, too many to count! Internal and external conflicts are what control most our decisions. In, "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket," Tom wants to get a job promotion but he also wants to go out with his wife. Throughout the whole story, he fights with external and internal conflicts until he comes to the conclusion that his wife matters more than his promotion at work. His external and internal conflicts affected his decisions. Let's start with how Tom's internal conflicts change the plot of the story. Tom has many internal conflicts that we read about throughout the story. He is guilty that his wife is going to the movies without him because he wants to work on his new idea for work. Then, later he is on the edge of the window scared out of his mind and he is wondering why he spent so much time on his work and not with his wife. Then when he finally gets back into the apartment and sees the paper fly out the window again he struggles with himself with wanting to get the paper but knowing that he should go find his wife after all the time he had to reflect on his life. Each of those conflicts leads to a …show more content…
He finally made the decision to give up on the piece of paper that had been his life for weeks. He realized that his wife was more important and he realized this because of the conflicts that started circling around in his brain. This applies to our lives as well because when we decide even the most trivial things in our lives such as what to eat we think about different conflicts. Such as if someone else in the family will be mad that you ate whatever without them. Or if you will become too fat by eating something. External and internal conflicts change more than just a storybook character's choices, but our daily decisions as well and we should pay attention to