Short Story Contents Of A Dead Man's Pocket

Life’s events can cause us to change our priorities. For instance, if you were diagnosed with cancer, it can change your life physically and mentally. It changes how you look at life now knowing that one day, you will no longer walk on the Earth, unless there was a cure. In the short story, Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket, Tom had many priorities in which changed at the end. In the beginning of the story, Tom has to make a decision on whether to go to the movies with his wife or stay at home and work on his writing. He already has decided that he was not going to the movies which makes him have a “hot- guilty conscience”, so he opens the window. He feels guilty because he knew that he made the wrong decision on not going with his wife. As his wife leaves the apartment, she reminds him that he wanted to see it too. Instead of going to the movies with a wife and seeing a movie that he was really interested in, he chooses to stay behind and work on his project that he feels will promote him to the top of …show more content…
Tom is faced with a big decision; forget the yellow paper which he has been working on for months, or go out to the ledge and retrieve it. After contemplating, he realizes the importance of the paper, even though “it wouldn’t bring him a raise in pay… it wouldn’t bring him a promotion either.” No matter what he thought, “he couldn't escape the thought” that this project was a key to his promotion. Tom had become so consumed in his project that he would put himself in danger, which he did. He began to convince himself that going out onto the ledge would be a simple task. “Tom laughed at” the situation in order to explain that action in his mind. He “created a mental picture of himself sliding along the ledge” as he pictured the simplicity at which he would redeem the yellow paper and return to his apartment. He does not imagine the